The North St. Paul Police Department suffers a cyber attack from a "business email compromise incident," and the city will hire national cybersecurity experts to investigate the breach.
By Kristi Miller
Source Pioneer Press
Aug. 5, 2025
2 min read
North St. Paul, MN, Police Department
What to know
The North St. Paul Police Department suffered a cyberattack involving a "business email compromise incident."
The attack potentially exposed sensitive data, and the city council held an emergency meeting to hire cybersecurity experts to assess the breach.
The timing and full impact of the incident remain unclear, and investigators are looking at similar recent attacks in nearby communities.
The North St. Paul City Council held an emergency meeting Monday night to announce that the city’s police department had “recently experienced a cyber attack that may have compromised some data.”
“This meeting was called in response to a potentially ongoing cybersecurity concern, a matter requiring immediate consideration to safeguard the public interest and prevent further damage,” the city said on its website.
During the meeting, the council moved to hire cybersecurity experts with the national law firm of McDonald Hopkins to assess the full scope of the breach.
City officials also said that the threat resulted from a “business email compromise incident.”
In such digital security breaches, criminals send an email message that appears to come from a known source making a legitimate request. If the targets of the emails are deceived, they can provide compromising information to the criminals or allow them to install malicious software in the victims’ computer networks.
It wasn’t clear when the breach happened or when it was first detected by North St. Paul officials.
Last week, the city of St. Paul announced that it, too, had been the target of a cyberattack that disrupted some online municipal services. Federal, state and local authorities are continuing to investigate the extent of the breach and who orchestrated it.
