NEW ULM — Brown County commissioners approved the purchase of cybersecurity insurance and a password manager for the Information Technology (IT) Department Tuesday.

Brown County IT Director Nathan Beran said both purchases address cybersecurity issues that have caused government entities losses due to digital attacks.

“Cybersecurity continues to be a major risk for the county,” said Beran. “We’re aware of Minnesota cities and counties suffering losses, some very significant in data loss, outages and monetary damages.”

Beran said Brown County has some insurance coverage through the Minnesota Counties Intergovernmental Trust (MCIT), a public, risk-sharing pool dedicated to providing coverage and service to members.

“The MCIT coverage is a fraction of the loss a medium to large cybersecurity issue would cause. The coverage is also pooled among counties so there is a chance funds could be exhausted by other agency losses before one happened at Brown County,” he said.

Beran said his department contacted National Insurance Services (NIS) as a broker to solicit quotes for Brown County. Quotes were requested from six insurers. Three decline to offer quotes. Three quotes were received. National Insurance Services determined two of them were too costly to be competitive.

Beran said Coalition Insurance Solutions, Inc. provides cybersecurity insurance for other Minnesota counties.

“We’ve heard good feedback about the company as a proactive cybersecurity partner,” he said. “The purchase is not budgeted. We propose using contingency funds to buy the coverage.”

“What’s the chances of success negotiating with criminals? There’s still no guarantee,” said Commissioner Dave Borchert.

The policy has a $3 million limit with $25,000 deductible.

An NIS representative attending the meeting online said most cybersecurity strikes come from overseas.

“We deal with this in identification theft,” said Borchert, who is also the New Ulm Police Chief.

“Does this security work?” asked Commissioner Tony Berg.

“The problem is, we don’t know what we don’t know,” said Beran. “We can button up as much as we can, but there is always the human element, determining what is real and what isn’t. We have a very high risk.”

Borchert said he didn’t think insurance is the overall solution.

“We can’t keep letting overseas bad actors steal from us and negotiate with them,” he said. “I’d like to invest in prevention.”

By a 4-1 vote, commissioners approved purchasing cybersecurity insurance from Coalition Insurance Solutions for $22,256.64. A motion was made by Commissioner Brian Braun and seconded by Scott Windschitl. Borchert cast a dissenting vote.

Beran said a password manager helps online users generate more secure passwords, encrypts them to a high level and stores them in a secure cloud.

“Browsers are very insecure with passwords,” he said. “Because county employees work with many vendors, other agencies, and use many applications, they have a lot of passwords to keep track of. We have this budgeted for 2026. We expected to see a reduction in forgotten passwords, less employee time used trying to remember and find passwords, and better security through stronger passwords.”

He said the CIT Solutions quote cost $205.74 this year but the other quote from Virtual Guardian costs more over three years.

Commissioners unanimously approved purchasing Keeper Password Manager from CIT Solutions for $52,814.92 over three years, motion by Borchert, seconded by Braun.

“I think it’s a good use of funds,” said Borchert.