Govtech giant Conduent won’t rule out cyberattack as outage drags on

An ongoing “service interruption” at government contractor giant Conduent sparked outages across several U.S. states, leaving residents without access to some benefits and support payments.

A person familiar with the incident told TechCrunch the outage was caused by a cyberattack. Conduent spokesperson Sean Collins acknowledged the company’s outage was ongoing, but declined to answer questions or rule out a cyber incident. 

“We are currently experiencing a service interruption affecting some applications while we have restored service over the past few days. The Conduent technology team is working hard to resolve any remaining issues,” said Conduent’s spokesperson.

Wisconsin’s Department of Children and Families told residents in a social media post January 17 it was unable to process child support payments across the state for much of the week. The department said four states, including Wisconsin, were affected by the outage at Conduent. Department spokesperson Gina Paige said its service was restored January 19, but deferred comment on the cause of the outage to Conduent. 

Oklahoma Human Services, which manages the state’s food assistance program, told residents in a social media post on January 9 that Conduent’s customer service line was hit by the “technical outage.” Spokesperson Casey White told TechCrunch the state’s systems are “working as expected” and that it experienced “no outages related to security at Conduent.”

In June 2020, Conduent confirmed a ransomware attack several days after reporting a service interruption. The Maze ransomware gang took credit for the breach, and subsequently published various documents stolen from the company’s systems.

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