https://www.pcmag.com/news/several-state-unemployment-portals-back-online-after-cyberattack
Geographic Solutions restores unemployment benefit platforms in three states. The vendor expects all state workforce systems to be back online by the end of this week.
US states hit by a cyberattack that shut down online access to their unemployment services last week are starting to come back online.
“As of July 4th, our systems supporting unemployment benefit platforms in Louisiana, Nebraska, and Tennessee were restored and are currently taking claims,” Geographic Solutions Inc. (GSI) tells PCMag.
Florida-based Geographic Solutions powers employment services at dozens of state agencies. But last week, the company was forced to take its IT systems down due to a cyberattack, which prevented tens of thousands of people across the US from filing unemployment claims on time.
Since then, Geographic Solutions has been working “24/7” and over the July 4th holiday to restore services. Today, the company said “several of our state workforce systems are also back online. We anticipate that all our state workforce systems will be online by the end of this week.”
However, Geographic Solutions didn’t respond to questions about the nature of the cyberattack, including if it involved ransomware. The company has only told(Opens in a new window) state officials that early indications show no personal data was accessed or removed during the incident.
In the meantime, both Nebraska(Opens in a new window) and Tennessee(Opens in a new window) have confirmed their unemployment services are back online and can now accept new claims.
“Although we understand this has caused disruption for unemployment claimants and other users, taking the site offline was an important measure to protect the data of working Nebraskans,” said Nebraska’s Commissioner of Labor John Albin. The state will issue back payments to all eligible claimants.
However, California’s virtual jobs center site CalJobs, which is also used for unemployment benefit eligibility, remains offline. The state’s Employment Development Department tells PCMag Geographic Solutions is still working to restore the site. “EDD is posting messaging on its website(Opens in a new window) and through social media(Opens in a new window) to alert customers about the outage and will provide further updates as they become available from GSI,” it added.
Geographic Solution’s own website also remains offline and has been replaced with a banner that says: “Temporarily Down for Maintenance.”