Technology

So while Utah punches above its weight in tech, St. Paul area absolutely dwarfs it in population. Surely they have a robust cybersecurity industry there...

https://lecbyo.files.cmp.optimizely.com/download/fa9be256b74111efa0ca8e42e80f1a8f?sfvrsn=a8aa5246_2

Utah, #1 projected tech sector growth in the next decade, of all 50 states.

Utah, #8 for tech sector % of entire state economy, of all 50 states.

Minnesota?

Doesn't crack top 10 for any metrics.

Utah may not be the biggest or techiest state, but it is way more so than Minnesota.

The National Guard just seems like a desperate move.

Again, this is my argument, but you are only seeing desperation as due to incompetence, not due to... actual severity.

When they're deployed, they take orders from the the federal military,

Not actually true unless the Nat Guard has been given a direct command by the Pentagon.

and at peace, monitoring foreign threats seems like a federal thing.

... which is why the FBI were called in, in addition to the Nat Guard being able to report up the military CoC.

You call in the National Guard to put down a riot or something where you just need bodies, not for anything niche.

I mean, you yourself have explained that the Nat Guard does have a CyberSec ability, and I've explained they also have the ability to potentially summon even greater CyberSec ability.

I guess you would be surprised how involved the military is / can be in defending against national security threatening, critical infrastructure comprimising kinds of domestic threats.

Remember Stuxnet?

Yeah other people can do that to us now, we kinda uncorked the genie bottle on that one.

Otherwise, just call a local cybersecurity firm to trace the attack and assess damage.

It is not everyone's instinct or best practice to immediately hire a contracted firm to do things that government agencies can, and have a responsibility to do.

If this was like, Amazon being comprimised, yeah I can see that being a more likely avenue, though if it was serious, they'd probably call in some or multiple forms of 'the Feds' as well.

But this was a breach/compromise of a municipal network... thats a government thing. Not a private sector thing.

EDIT:

Also, you are acting like either you are unaware of the following, or ... don't think its real?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

Kind of a really big deal in terms of Utah and the tech sector and the Federal government and... things that were totally illegal before the PATRIOT Act.

Exabytes of storage.

Exabytes.

Utah literally is where the NSA is doing their damndest to make a hardcopy of literally all internet traffic and content.

Given how classified this facility is, I wouldn't be surprised if their employees don't exactly show up in standard Utah employment figures.