Director, 177th Cyber Protection Team, U.S. Army Cyber Command Industrial Security Program Manager, Medtronic
Army Major Brian Morgan is the current commander of the Minnesota National Guard’s 177th Cyber Protection Team, one of eight Cyber Protection Teams in the entire National Guard. He provides guidance, leadership, and oversight to the 39-person team of cyber professionals, and ensures they are trained and proficient on the team’s principal functions of intelligence-driven threat hunting, threat clearing, environment hardening, and assessing the hardening efforts. Morgan enlisted in the Wisconsin Army National Guard in 2003 as an infantryman, and was commissioned as a Military Intelligence second lieutenant in 2006. He transferred to the Minnesota National Guard in 2008 to work in the 34th Division G2 (Intelligence). He has served in both full-time, federal technician, and traditional M-Day roles within the Minnesota National Guard and has completed deployments to Iraq in 2009-2010, Kuwait in 2018-2019, and most recently to Maryland from 2020-2021 leading the first-ever deployment of the 177 Cyber Protection team. He has extensive experience in information security, technical security, networking, software, and cyber operations. He has commanded at the company level, and has served on battalion staff for the 2-135 IN RGT and on division staff in the 34th Infantry Division G2 (Intelligence) and G6 (Signal). His most significant awards include the Meritorious Service Medal with two bronze oak leaf clusters.
Major Morgan has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Mathematics & Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Stout and a Master of Business Administration from Saint Thomas Opus College of Business. He holds numerous professional certifications in information security and networking such as CISSP, CISM, CEH, CCNA, CCSP, CNDA, PCEP, and AWS-CCP. He is a graduate of the Army’s Functional Area 26A (Cyber and network engineering) school at Fort Gordon, and is one of only four officers in the Minnesota Army National Guard to hold the full 17A (Cyber Operations Officer) MOS.
In his civilian occupation, he serves as the Industrial Security Program Manager for Medtronic, working to ensure the security of IT/OT integration and ultimately the safety of medical devices. He is the President of the Minnesota Chapter of Military Cyber Professional Association (MCPA).