Overview
- Gov. Tim Walz authorized Guard cyber teams after a Monday attack that continued into Tuesday and disrupted key county systems.
- Winona County took networks offline, declared a local emergency, and warned of service delays, while 911 and emergency response continue to operate.
- The executive order says the incident exceeded internal and commercial response capacity, and the county requested Guard support while working with MNIT, the BCA, the FBI, the League of Minnesota Cities, and outside forensics firms.
- This is the county’s second attack this year, and a preliminary review indicates a different criminal group than the January ransomware incident.
- State officials report a sharp rise in public-sector hacks that now often steal data before encrypting it, a tactic called double extortion, and they urge offline backups, device threat monitoring, and multifactor logins to blunt the damage.