Maryland, Virginia and D.C. use the same software company for some of its services related to unemployment benefits, and a recent cyberattack is creating an impact on people who rely on it.
Geographic Solutions, Inc. (GSI) informed the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development about an “identified anomalous activity” on its network last week. GSI is a company used in the D.C. area to administer similar and related services.
It is a widespread issue that is affecting more than 30 state workforce agencies across the country, the D.C. Department of Employment Services said in a news release.
The Maryland Department of Labor said it does not use GSI to administer unemployment insurance. It does use GSI as its Maryland Workforce Exchange vendor and said that during the outage, those who need to upload their re-employment activities should keep private records that can be entered online when the system is back up
Virginia uses the company in its Workforce Connection. On Wednesday, a Virginia Employment Commission spokesperson said its website had been restored. During the outage, the job seekers were directed to the Career and Workforce’s Labor Market Information website to look for jobs, or to the National Labor Exchange website.
The D.C. Department of Employment Services (DOES) said the GSI service interruption affects the city’s Paid Family Leave system and the Virtual One-Stop. This has led to the inability to file new claims for paid family leave and modify existing claims. Scheduled benefit payments have also been delayed. The system outage is also preventing customers from conducting job searches or completing career assessments in the VOS system.
Unemployment insurance benefits in D.C. are not affected.
GSI told DOES that there was no data breach, and the personal information of users has not been compromised.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the Maryland Department of Labor does not use GSI to administer unemployment insurance.
WTOP’s Kristi King contributed to this report.
