Louisiana’s unemployment website remains down due to cyberattack

BATON ROUGE, La. - Tensions are starting to boil over after Louisiana’s unemployment claims website was knocked offline.

The Louisiana Workforce Commission said Geographic Solutions (GSI), the company that operates their “HiRE” website, discovered an attempted malware attack that required it to take state labor exchanges and unemployment claims systems offline.

The resulting outage from the attack is also impacting as many as 40 other states and Washington D.C., which use GSI. The HiRE website is used to file unemployment claims, job searches, and other functions.

This outage impacts the near 11,000 people currently filing continued claims for unemployment in Louisiana.

Heidi Turner is one of those people.

“When I called, they told me they didn’t know. I was told it could be a week, or it could be a month. Just to keep filing. That’s all really that they told me because they have no information,” Heidi Turner said.

Turner said she was laid off in March and this is her first time filing for unemployment. She is worried she might have to make some tough choices if her benefits don’t roll in on time. “My husband is having surgery next month. So, that was kind of put aside for him for a co-payment, but if I have to tap into it, we’ll just have to do it,” Turner said.

Turner said her husband is employed so she believes they will be fine, but she understands not everyone is as fortunate.”I’m sure there’s people that are worse off than me. I don’t have any small children, my children are grown, but still, what are they going to do? I do have support, but what about the people that don’t have anybody,” Turner said.All she can do is sit back and be patient. ”So, that’s kind of where we’re at,” Turner said.

LWC said the site was still down on Friday, July 1, the day payments were supposed to go out.

CLICK HERE for more, including the phone number to call to file a weekly certification for benefits.