Coast Guard Establishes 2003 Cyber Protection Team to Help Defend Marine Transportation System

The Coast Guard Cyber Command has formed a new cyber protection team to provide assessment, threat hunting and incident response capabilities to the Marine Transportation System, which the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency identified as a part of the critical transportation systems sector.

The 2003 Cyber Protection Team, deployed to Coast Guard Island, is the third CGCYBER CPT but is the first geographically detached unit of its kind under the command. It is currently focused on expanding the team to obtain full operational capability certification from U.S. Cyber Command by spring 2024, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Lt. Cmdr. Kenneth Miltenberger was appointed as the 2003 CPT’s commanding officer. He was previously the chief of the CGCYBER Cyber Operational Assessments Branch, during which he formed the Coast Guard’s Cyber Red Team, a highly skilled group conducting cyber threat emulations on Coast Guard networks to identify potential weaknesses and assess the effectiveness of network defenses.

Establishing CPTs is essential to help defend the MTS, which consists of over 3,500 facilities that intersect with other critical infrastructures related to maritime activities. To date, the USCG CPTs have provided assistance to more than 50 partners in the MTS. The teams have also collaborated on joint cyber operations with CISA, the FBI, and the Department of Defense.