Breach Disasters: What You Need to Know

Data breaches in general are no laughing matter, but a recent class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of fifteen million customers in the United States goes a long way towards proving just how serious they have now become. In early October, Wylie Aitken of the law firm Aitken Aitken and Cohn filed one such suit on behalf of all of the customers that were personally affected by a data breach of the Experian server that happened earlier in 2015.

What You Need to Know About Preventing a Breach Disaster

Over fifteen million people had either their personal or financial information (and in many cases both) stolen during the massive breach, one of the largest of its kind in United States history. Hackers were able to make off with not only names, dates of birth and other pieces of identifying personal information, but social security numbers as well. The breach is said to have affected people who applied for one of the many services that T-Mobile provides between September 1, 2013 and September 16, 2015. While it's important to note that representatives have made assurances that Experian's customer credit servers were in no way affected, it is still an incredibly serious situation that paints an important picture of just how necessary cyber security has become.

Law firm data breach specialists from Aitken Aitken and Cohn indicated that the suit was being filed because Experian violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act. More specifically, they failed to take necessary measures to make sure that the important customer information that was being housed on their servers was protected against exactly the type of situation that they now find themselves in. On a separate note, they also say that they never disclosed to customers of T-Mobile and other businesses that they didn't have the necessary systems in place to prevent this type of issue in the first place. Representatives also take issue with the fact that customers were not provided with a timely notice that the Experian data breach occurred at all.

Recent information indicates that this type of situation is unfortunately not an isolated incident. According to the recent ABA 2015 Legal Technology Survey, even law firms themselves are not immune to these types of challenging situations in the digital age. The survey not only confirms that information security breaches are the top vulnerabilities that many protect data breach law firms face, but that many lawyers don't consider data security to be a major threat in the first place. According to information contained within the survey, firms with more than 100 lawyers were incredibly attractive targets for these types of data breach situations.

All of this just goes to show that a data breach can essentially happen anywhere at any time. All business owners, regardless of the industry that they're operating in, need to take adequate measures to protect both themselves and their customers at all costs.