Free Credit Monitoring Helpful, But Not Enough: Ohio Politicians

COLUMBUS, OH — The 400,000 Ohioans targeted in unemployment scams during the pandemic can now receive free credit monitoring through the state — a move applauded by two state congresspeople but a move they say does not go far enough to protect Ohioans.

The Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services (ODJFS) announced Tuesday it would offer a year of free credit monitoring to the 410,000 Ohioans victimized by unemployment scams during the pandemic. The department also denied any widespread data breaches by hackers had occurred since March 2020, a statement challenged by state Reps. Lisa Sobecki, a Democrat from Toledo, and Jeffrey Crossman, a Democrat from Parma.

“While ODJFS refuses to acknowledge that their systems have been hacked, we’ve heard directly from constituents who clearly have been impacted," Crossman said. "Refusing to even refer to these incidents as ‘hacking’ misrepresents the problems ODJFS has had."

Department of Jobs and Family Services officials have consistently denied that their systems suffered widespread hacking, calling Crossman and Sobecki's claims "inaccurate" but vowed to "stay vigilant" with regards to cyber security.

“The announcement that ODJFS will finally provide credit monitoring is welcome, but long overdue. Thousands of Ohioans reported that their identities were stolen over a year ago, and they deserve better protection,” Sobecki said. “I encourage Republican leaders in the state to fully investigate the hacking, and to do more to ensure that widespread identity theft like we saw with the Ohio Unemployment System doesn’t happen again.”

The department said in a statement it has implemented several new security measures, including:

• New verification and fraud-scoring methods from IOP and Google.
• New investigative tools to detect fraud, such as a fraud dashboard developed in conjunction with the Innovate Ohio Platform (IOP), and crossmatches with the National Association of State Workforce Agencies’ Identity Verification Tool and Integrity Data Hub.
• New cybersecurity fraud solution programs.
• New and regular cyber fraud defense reviews.
• Implementing multi-factor authentication.

The department is also working on building a new unemployment system.