Teacher who filed for unemployment benefits may be one of the million-plus at risk of data breach
More than a million left vulnerable in WA due to cyber security breach
More than a million people who filed unemployment benefits last year could be at risk of a data breach with a third party software vendor at the State Auditor s Office.
The company is Accellion, and the auditor’s office has been using its program for 13 years to transfer files. We paid for, we expected and we deserve to have a secure system, said Pat McCarthy, Washington State Auditor. We believed that Accellion was providing a secure file transfer product for the State of Washington.
Get Permission
Washington State Auditor Pat McCarthy says her office was not notified about a vulnerability in Accellion s file transfer product.
A data breach of a Washington state auditor s system exposed 1.4 million unemployment claimants’ records. The breach involved exploiting a flaw in Accellion s file transfer product, called File Transfer Appliance, and the state’s auditor says the office was never notified of the vulnerability and that a fix was available, the Seattle Times reports.
Organizations in New Zealand and Australia have also been affected by breaches tied to exploits of the vulnerability. But Accellion says it issued a patch in December 2020 and alerted all affected customers.
Personal data of Washington state applicants seeking unemployment benefits hacked Alfred Charles, KOMONews.com Executive Producer
Personal data of Washington state applicants seeking unemployment benefits hacked
Replay Video UP NEXT
The Washington State Auditor s Office said Monday that online information of 1.6 million people who filed for unemployment benefits last year may have been inappropriately accessed on Christmas Day when the data systems of a third-party provider were hacked.
According to an online post by the state agency, an an unauthorized person gained access to SAO files in late December by exploiting a weakness in the file transfer process of a company known as Accellion, a private company based in California s Silicon Valley that is focused on secure file sharing and collaboration.
Completely unacceptable : Data breach compromised info of 1.6 million Washingtonians who sought unemployment
The Washington state auditor said those potentially affected include people who filed for unemployment benefits from Jan. 1 to Dec. 10, 2020. Author: Associated Press, KING 5 Staff Published: 11:44 AM PST February 1, 2021 Updated: 10:55 PM PST February 1, 2021
SEATTLE The Washington State Auditor’s Office (SAO) said a data breach may have exposed the personal information of 1.6 million residents who filed for unemployment last year, as well as other information from state agencies and local governments.
The breach involved third-party software used by the auditor’s office to transmit files. The software vendor, Accellion, announced last month that it had been attacked in December.
Seattle’s $3M contract to research public safety under state scrutiny
The state auditor is examining the contract awarded to King County Equity Now, a group born out of last summer’s protests, to research alternatives to police.
by
Protesters face off with police in Seattle s Capitol Hill neighborhood, July 25, 2020. (Matt M. McKnight/Crosscut)
A $3 million contract between the city of Seattle and a group advocating for police alternatives is under examination by the Washington State Auditor’s Office, a spokesperson for the auditor confirmed to Crosscut.
The audit follows scores of complaints filed through the office’s hotline about the process by which the funding was awarded.