Louisiana’s 529 college START savings accounts were brought back online with limited functionality on Wednesday, October 8, following a now-contained incident. START account holders continue to access the START system. The system continues to be monitored by LOSFA, Regents, the State Treasurer, and relevant banking systems.
While LOSFA offices remain closed, critical LOSFA staff continue to work out of the Regents’ offices at the Claiborne Building in Baton Rouge. Efforts continue to reinstate phone and email systems to enable the LOSFA office to reopen as soon as possible.
As staff continue to fully restore the system, START staff are working diligently to process transactions in the order in which they were received. All transactions scheduled between September 26 and October 7 will be processed, verified, and approved first. All other transactions scheduled after October 7 will then be processed, verified, and approved. It may take up to two weeks for all START account information to be fully up to date.
On Friday, October 10, communications regarding the incident were sent by email to the 40,000 START account holders with an email address on file; the balance of the account holders will receive the communication by mail. For security reasons, the cyber incident notification message does not include any links to START accounts or the system.
Additional information will be shared in the coming days regarding the timeline for restoring full operations of both START accounts and the entire LOSFA system. Protecting the security and privacy of the state’s information systems is of the highest importance, and lessons learned will be applied in developing future resilience measures.
If you have questions about your START account, please contact the START team at start@laregents.edu or call 225-206-5303 for assistance.
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Contact
Chris Yandle, Ph.D., APR, Associate Commissioner for Strategic Communications
chris.yandle@laregents.edu • 985-373-5845