ORLANDO, Fla. – Thousands of Florida unemployment accounts were locked without warning earlier this month in a move to counter a potential data breach that targeted nearly 58,000 Department of Economic Opportunity Connect accounts.
News 6′s Mike Holfeld joins Justin Warmoth on ‘The Weekly’ this week to discuss where unemployment accounts stand after the “force reset” locked thousands of accounts, prompting the department to roll out a PIN reset strategy.
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DEO Communications Chief Emilie Oglesby explained to News 6 the PIN reset strategy was launched to counter cyberthieves who targeted the 58,000 Connect accounts between April and July.
“In an abundance of caution, the department completed a force reset for PIN numbers for the individuals who were impacted by the data breach,” Oglesby said.
Holfeld said even while the PIN reset was designed to fix the potential data breach issue, bots in the system existed and there was someone else in there “trying to unfix.”
“So that’s what happened when you heard about this loop, they’d hit the button, you’d try to reset your PIN and what happened? You couldn’t reset,” he said.
[RELATED: Florida Department of Economic Opportunity PIN reset fixes one problem but new issue arises ]
And while the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity PIN reset debacle was successfully addressed, a new issue has come up after the department’s software fix.
You can watch the full break down on “The Weekly” by playing the video at the top of this story.