Cyberattack Shuts Down Unemployment Services Across US

The incident risks stopping tens of thousands of Americans from claiming their unemployment benefits on time.

A cyberattack targeting a third-party vendor has shut down online unemployment services across several US states.

The incident involves a Florida-based company called Geographic Solutions Inc. (GSI), which markets itself as a leading provider of employment software for government agencies. Starting on Tuesday, numerous state labor departments including those in California(Opens in a new window), Louisiana(Opens in a new window) and Tennessee(Opens in a new window) reported that an outage at Geographic Solutions had forced them to take their online unemployment services offline.

In a statement(Opens in a new window) to Tennessee officials, Geographic Solutions said it recently “identified anomalous activity” on the company’s network. However, Louisiana’s labor department offered more specifics and said the company actually discovered an “attempted malware attack,” which required Geographic Solutions to shut down its systems.

“The resulting outage from the attack is also impacting as many as 40 other states and Washington, D.C., which use GSI,” Louisiana’s labor department added.

As a result, the cyberattack risks preventing thousands of Americans from claiming their unemployment benefits on time. Louisiana’s labor department noted that 11,000 people currently rely on its online system to file unemployment claims, but it plans on issuing payments only after the department’s unemployment filing system comes back online.

It remains unclear what kind of malware attacked Geographic Solutions’ IT network, and if ransomware was involved. But Nebraska’s labor department has said: “GSI has indicated this attack affected only access to GSI online systems and there is no evidence of any user data being compromised.”

Geographic Solutions also told officials in Tennessee: “We are taking steps to help prevent this from happening again.”

“Our current focus is working around the clock to bring Jobs4TN back online. We anticipate that this will occur prior to the July 4th holiday,” the company added. In the meantime, the vendor’s main website remains offline.

Source

Also:  Cyberattacks on a software company have disrupted unemployment benefits in some states.