Gov. Jared Polis issued an executive order Monday activating a Colorado National Guard unit to assist with statewide cybersecurity during the upcoming election.

Under the order, up to nine members of the Guard’s Defensive Cyber Operations Element will train with and assist the Secretary of State’s Office with election cybersecurity defense efforts ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8. The unit’s support will end on or before Nov. 30, unless Polis extends the order.

Secretary of State Jena Griswold requested the National Guard’s support with election cybersecurity last week, according to the order. The unit was also deployed to assist with election cybersecurity during Colorado’s June primary election and the November 2021 election.

“Outside of Colorado, voter registration databases have been compromised by cyber actors hacking into various systems,” the executive order reads. “While cyber actors are unable to modify voter records, breaches could result in the release of voters’ personally identifiable information. The exposure of voters’ personally identifiable information does not threaten the integrity of our state elections, but could undermine public confidence in the system and suppress voter registration.”

“The Colorado National Guard Defensive Cyber Operations Element has unique cyber capabilities to assist in protecting critical election infrastructure,” it adds. 

This order comes less than one month after a foreign cyberattack took the state-run Colorado.gov portal homepage offline for over 24 hours.

The State Emergency Operations Center said an “anonymous suspected foreign actor” forced the homepage offline and targeted multiple other state government services and websites across the U.S. State officials refused to release any additional information about the attack, citing the ongoing investigation. 

CNN reported that the pro-Russia hacking group Killnet took credit for the cyberattack and also claimed to have knocked state government websites offline in Kentucky, Mississippi and other states.

NBC said the hacking group simply overwhelmed the states’ websites with web traffic to take them down, and there is no indication that any of the states’ internal systems were accessed. Experts called it an attempt to give the false impression that U.S. elections are vulnerable to foreign interference, despite the election system being largely disconnected from the internet.