Ascension Data & Analytics Didn’t Do Enough to Prevent Data Breach, Lawsuit Claims

A class action lawsuit says Ascension Data & Analytics did not do enough to prevent a data breach that took place in January 2019, putting consumers’ information at risk for identify theft and fraud.

The Ascension Data & Analytics data breach class action lawsuit was filed by Bernard and Kathy Prioleau.

They claim that their personal information was left vulnerable to a data breach because Ascension failed to sufficiently secure their servers.

The Ascension Data & Analytics class action claims that the data breach cased the couple injury because they will be left vulnerable to identify theft and fraud for many years.

The plaintiffs seek damages on behalf of themselves and on behalf of all other similarly affected individuals whose information was exposed in the January 2019 data breach.

The Ascension Data & Analytics class action states that the plaintiffs provided information and documents in connection with a home mortgage loan to Stanch Mortgage Acquisition Company.

Allegedly, part of Ascension’s business is to convert paper documents and hand-written notes to computer-readable files through a process known as “optical character recognition.”

The Ascension Data & Analytics data breach class action claims that with the assistance of OpticsML, Ascension processed documents related to mortgage and loan applications, and stored the converted data on its servers.

The Ascension Data & Analytics class action lawsuit says that in January 2019, several news outlets reported that more than 24 million financial and banking documents related to tens of thousands of loans and mortgages from some of the biggest banks in the United Staes were made public online.

Allegedly, on January 10, 2019, an independent security researcher, Bob Diachenko discovered that a server running an Elasticsearch database containing loan and mortgage documents was not locked or protected via password, which allowed anyone to access the massive cache of documents.

This server reportedly contained the personal information of many people, including names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers.

The Prioleaus argue that the exposed data seems to have come from documents processed by Ascension. Allegedly, the server contained more than a decade’s worth of information.

According to the plaintiffs, after the initially exposed database was shut down, there was an additional server discovered whose information was not secure, which contained some duplicate information from the other exposed server.

Additionally, the couple claims that the company did not notify consumers fast enough about the data breach, leaving them vulnerable to identify theft.

The data breach class action states that consumers were offered two years of credit monitoring and identify theft protection services to help them recover from the potential negative impact of the data breach, but this is not enough.

The Prioleaus say that a data breach can expose a person to identify theft for many years, which can take a long-term toll on a person’s credit and financial health.

Additionally, the consumers claim that Ascension not only caused them economic harm but also inconvenienced them because they were forced to spend time trying to recover from the data breach.

The Prioleaus are represented by Harper Todd Segui, Gary E. Mason, and Danielle L. Perry of Whitfield Bryson & Mason LLP, and by Gary M. Klinger of Kozonis & Klinger LTD.

The Ascension Data & Analytics Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Bernard Prioleau, et al. v. Ascension Data & Analytics LLC, Case No. 2:19-cv-01116-RMG, in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division.

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