The Washington Point out Section of Licensing (DOL) has shuttered its Experienced On line Licensing and Regulatory Data Procedure (POLARIS) after detecting suspicious exercise.
POLARIS suppliers details about license holders and applicants. The sort of details differs for distinctive licenses and may possibly contain Social Security figures, dates of beginning, driver license numbers and other personally pinpointing information (PII).
In a statement posted to its website, the DOL mentioned it grew to become mindful of uncommon goings involving skilled and occupational license knowledge in the course of the week commencing January 24 2022. The choice was taken to shut down POLARIS as a precaution whilst the exercise was investigated.
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The section claimed the Washington Office of Cybersecurity was aiding in the risk-free restoration of the program and in the investigation to establish whether or not a facts breach experienced occurred.
“At this time, we have no sign that any other DOL data was affected, this sort of as driver and auto licensing data. All other DOL units are working usually,” stated the DOL.
It added: “With the guidance and help of nationally regarded cybersecurity professionals, we are investigating what took place and what knowledge and persons may be afflicted.”
The department has made an Intent to Renew sort to aid people pros who have tried to renew their licenses when POLARIS is down. A connect with center was set up on February 4 to solution questions by people today who ended up impacted by the outage.
DOL has stated it will not act from people whose license expired while POLARIS was inaccessible.
The section issues around 40 forms of licenses. These involve driver and auto licenses and expert licenses for cosmetologists, serious estate brokers, architects, driving instructors and bail bondsmen.
DOL mentioned that the security incident only appeared to most likely effect expert and occupational license data.
“At this time, we are not informed of any suspicious exercise involving other DOL methods, this sort of as the driver and auto licensing process (DRIVES),” said the DOL.
“DRIVES is working commonly. We are checking all our systems pretty cautiously.”
The department mentioned it will notify any individuals whose individual knowledge was accessed in the course of the incident and supply them with “additional guidance.”
Some parts of this write-up are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-journal.com