Excellus Agrees To Class Action Settlement Following Data Breach

Excellus Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit Overview: 

• Who: Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield has reached a settlement with a class of its members, providing them injunctive relief. 
• Why: Members filed a class action lawsuit against Excellus following a data breach that exposed their private information.
• Where: The class action lawsuit was filed in New York federal court.

Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield has agreed to provide injunctive relief to health care members to resolve claims surrounding a 2015 data breach. 

The private information of more than 10 million Excellus’ members was exposed in the breach, which gave unauthorized access to members’ names, Social Security numbers, birthdates and financial account info, among other things, WHEC News 10 reports. 

Excellus, which discovered the breach in August 2015, notified its members about the incident, which occurred between December 2013 and May 2015, and provided them with two years of identity theft protection services. 

Members would ultimately choose to file a class action lawsuit against Excellus, arguing it had waited too long to disclose the breach and failed to properly inform them about what they needed to do to protect themselves on account of it, Spectrum News reports. 

Excellus Agrees To Upgrade Security As Part Of Settlement

Per the settlement agreement, Excellus will be required to increase and maintain a budget for security, come up with a plan to get rid of members’ information within a set time, improve its security and ability to find threats and create an extensive program for data archiving. 

Excellus has not admitted to any wrongdoing by agreeing to the settlement, Spectrum News reports. The health care provider previously paid a $5.1 million fine to the Office of Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services due to failing to prevent the data breach, WHEC News 10 reports. 

While the settlement only provides injunctive relief, individual class members can still seek monetary damages from the company, per the settlement agreement. 

A federal judge must still give the settlement final approval with a hearing set for April 13. 

Also this month, Accellion agreed to pay $8.1 million to victims of breaches that exposed the data of 9.1 million of the technology company’s customers. 

Was your private data exposed in the Excellus data breach? Let us know in the comments! 

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