The Florida Unemployment System suffered a data breach

Pierluigi Paganini May 23, 2020

Officials revealed that the Florida Unemployment System suffered a data breach that impacted some residents who have made unemployment claims.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity revealed that the Florida Unemployment System suffered a data breach that impacted some residents who have made unemployment claims.

It has notified 98 people that have been impacted by the incident, government representatives didn’t disclose when the breach took place either the number of the affected individuals and the type of information compromised.

The agency spokeswoman Paige Landrum announced that the breach was addressed within one hour after the officials became aware of it. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is offering tho the impacted citizens identity protection services for free.

Impacted users should be vigilant and report any unauthorized activity on their financial accounts.

“The DEO has received more than 2 million claims seeking unemployment benefits from Floridians since the coronavirus pandemic caused mass business closings around the state, though only 1.6 million claims have been verified.” reported the AP agency. “Just under 1 million jobless workers in Florida have been paid more than $2.6 billion in benefits.”

State Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, expressed concern about the response of the agency to the security breach and the measures it has adopted to prevent future incidents. Stewart sent a letter to Department of Management Services Secretary Jonathan Satter, whose office oversees information technology for other state agencies.

“Given the agency’s (DEO) track record with processing unemployment applications, I’m sure you will understand the great concern I have that all remedies have been quickly taken and that Floridians can be assured that their personal information is now secured and will be protected from future attacks,” Stewart wrote.

The good is that the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is not aware of malicious activity abusing exposed data.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Florida, hacking)

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