UnitedHealth Group, Minneapolis Public Schools and the city of St. Paul have all fallen victim to hackers who make a living through theft and extortion.

People like Alex Johnson, a security system manager at Minneapolis-based Ascent Solutions, earn theirs by acting as the first line of defense between those online criminals and Minnesota organizations.

The key to the job: Know the enemy.

“If you want to be a good incident responder, you kind of have to think like a hacker,” Johnson said, adding that computer hackers are highly organized and advanced, especially as tools like AI come on the scene.

Johnson, 26, of Chanhassen, Minnesota, didn’t go to school with this cybersecurity career in mind (he studied financial history and economics at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minneso

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