Officials with the Maine Department of Labor says they are working with an out-of-state vendor and law enforcement to determine how to protect Mainers whose personal information may have been stolen during a recent breach.
Labor Department spokeswoman Julie Rabinowitz says roughly 283,000 Maine records were vulnerable during a breach that now affects 4 million job seekers in ten states. It’s not yet clear how many Maine job seekers are affected, but Rabinowitz advised anyone who used a social security number to access the state’s Joblink website before March 16 to consider putting a freeze on their credit report.
She says the state is talking to America’s JobLink, the Kansas vendor that administers the website, to learn more about the breach and how to protect those affected.
“We are very concerned to make sure we do the right thing for the people who are affected by this,” Rabinowitz says.
Maine law allows residents to freeze their credit reports at no charge.
Officials believe hackers breached the site between Feb. 23 and Feb. 26, after a software patch was installed in November.
Maine signed a three-year contract with the Kansas-based JobLink last year. The online job search site and its security had previously been overseen by the state Office of Information Technology at a cost of $650,000 a year.
The outsourced contract saved the state about $48,000 a year. Rabinowitz says the switch to a new vendor wasn’t a cost-savings initiative but one designed to meet new federal guidelines.
