Cyberattack disrupts multiple state unemployment sites

At least nine states and Washington, D.C., had their unemployment claims and job placement sites disrupted by a cyberattack against vendor Geographic Solutions, according to NBC News. Geographic Solutions said that "anomalous" network activity caused the site outages, which have prevented Tennessee's Department of Labor and Workforce Development to provide unemployment benefits to nearly 12,000 residents. Nebraska's Department of Labor also noted that unemployment payments would only be given to residents upon the restoration of its NEworks online system. Meanwhile, Washington will not be able to accommodate paid family leaves and new claims due to the outage. Even though Geographic Solutions declined to confirm whether the outages stemmed from a ransomware attack, Recorded Future Ransomware Analyst Allan Liska believes such to be the case. "This attack has all of the hallmark signs of a ransomware attack. Generally, when an issue is technical, a company will communicate that quickly, whereas in cases of a cyberattack, especially, ransomware triage and communication generally take a lot longer," Liska added.