National Guard Cyber Protection Team welcomed home in Arden Hills Sunday

Sunday morning, the members of the Minnesota National Guard’s 177th Cyber Protection Team were welcomed home from Maryland.

The team is one of few of its kind in the United States.

“Cyber has been a real hot topic,” Darrin Stowe, unit readiness NCO, Sr. cyber operations supervisor, said. “Bad actors can collect, infiltrate data, they can get into critical infrastructure and have access to our information that we don’t want them to have access to.”

And with a technology-driven world, guardsmen say the work is critical to safety.

“They say the effect of an M4 rifle is what, 500 yards? But the effective range of a cyber-attack is the speed of light,” Cmdr. Brian Morgan said.