Incident Details
A federal judge has recently approved a class action status for a lawsuit against CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield that originated from a data breach incident in 2014. This legal development comes after nine years of ongoing legal proceedings. As a result of this decision, the lawsuit is now authorized to move forward, potentially leading to compensation for over a million plan members affected by the breach. The breach, which occurred in June 2014, involved hackers infiltrating CareFirst's systems and accessing the personal information of approximately 1.1 million plan members. It took several months before the breach was identified. Following similar data breaches at companies like Anthem Inc., Premera, Excellus, and Community Health Systems, CareFirst conducted an internal review of its systems, revealing unauthorized access to one of its databases. In May 2015, CareFirst disclosed the breach, specifying that a particular database storing information submitted by members and other users for accessing the company's online platforms had been compromised. The compromised data included names, birth dates, email addresses, and subscriber ID numbers. Notably, sensitive details such as Social Security numbers, financial data, or health information were not exposed in the breach.
Incident
How Did the Breach Happen?
Unauthorized individuals were able to breach the CareFirst systems, where the information of approximately 1.1 million members was stored. The security breach remained unnoticed for a considerable period of time.
What Data has been Compromised?
The data breach involved details such as names, dates of birth, email addresses, and subscriber identification numbers.
Why Did the company's Security Measures Fail?
The security breach happened as a result of someone gaining unauthorized entry to a database belonging to CareFirst. This incident points out a lapse in their ability to detect and stop such intrusions.
What Immediate Impact Did the Breach Have on the company?
After the security breach, CareFirst encountered a legal challenge that claimed a breach of contract and breaches of consumer protection laws, resulting in legal disputes and the potential for compensation for over 1 million members of the plan.
How could this have been prevented?
In order to avoid similar security breaches, CareFirst could have strengthened their security measures by conducting frequent security assessments, promptly identifying unauthorized access, and improving their data protection protocols.
What have we learned from this data breach?
The significance of taking proactive steps to enhance cybersecurity, promptly identifying breaches, implementing robust data protection protocols, and understanding the possible legal ramifications of inadequate safeguarding of confidential information is underscored by this instance of a data breach.
Summary of Coverage
In 2015, there was a data breach at CareFirst where member data was accessed without authorization. This incident resulted in a prolonged legal dispute and eventual certification of a class action lawsuit almost 9 years later. Although the compromised information did not contain extremely sensitive data, it exposed weaknesses in CareFirst's security systems and triggered discussions on the legal consequences of such breaches.