Nearly three weeks ago, the City of St. Paul detected a cyberattack that eventually impacted a variety of city services.
RELATED: St. Paul cyberattack: Organization takes credit for ransomware attack on city, releases some data
The Minnesota National Guard special cyber team, called in by Gov. Tim Walz at the end of July, finished its work on Thursday afternoon.
“While the situation is ongoing, the surge support that the Minnesota National Guard cyber team provided to the City of St. Paul was no longer required. The Minnesota National Guard is proud of the work that was conducted, in what was an example of living by the organization’s motto ‘Always Ready, Always There,’” wrote Army Lt. Col. Brian Morgan, MN National Guard Director of Cyber Coordination.
Earlier this week, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter provided the last on-camera update that hackers had not yet accessed critical personal information of city employees or the public.
RELATED: Cyber investigators say St. Paul ‘not out of the woods yet’
The mayor said the ransomware hackers shared data of what they took from parks and rec employees online, including work documents and copies of IDs.
On Friday afternoon, Mayor Carter’s office said the city remains in “active recovery from the ransomware attack.”
Online payment services for water and garbage services have been restored.
All department customer service lines have also been restored.
More than 3,000 city workers have gone through the process to get their new digital credentials; others are still going through the process.
RELATED: 3500 St. Paul city employees begin password reset process; city confirms cyberattack was ransomware
Mayor Carter’s office wrote that they would share the amount of money spent to recover from the cyberattacks once the city has fully recovered.
No timeline was given for when the city anticipates it will be fully back to normal.
“It does take time, you’ve got systems to clean up, you’ve got systems to reset, bring back online; you’ve got a lot of steps in the process to go through,” said Eric Ebner, a cybersecurity expert with 360 Security Services, who helps organizations fight off cyberattacks.
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS asked Ebner if the cyberattack that hit the city of St Paul should put other government entities on alert.
“The honest truth is that you are one ‘oops’ away from an event like happening,” Ebner said. “Whether it’s a misconfiguration inside your systems, inside your network, or somebody clicks on something, before they thought about what they should do.”
Click here to learn more about St. Paul City Services impacted.
