The Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) has many locations throughout Washington. Twenty, to be exact, employs over 1,200 people, which may not sound like a lot, but, considering the size of the offices, it’s a relatively large number.
The breach was an attack on the internal systems of the DOL, resulting in over 650,000 individuals having their information leaked. Anyone who ever had a license within the State of Washington may have been affected; their data was most likely still in the databases.
The breach was simply a cyber attack. At the time of writing, there has been no release as to what exactly happened. However, steps and procedures have been implemented to protect the affected individuals.
The breach occurred on January 24th, 2022.
The breach could affect any “Washingtonians” that applied for unemployment in 2021. All this information was in the breached systems and may have been a part of the breach. Over one million people applied for unemployment in 2021 in Washington alone.
The hack affected an estimated 650,000 people in Washington. The leaked data can include names, social security numbers (SSNs), and the license information of each of these people. This also means that addresses and other personal and identifying information were involved in the breach.