Ride the Lightning

Accellion Retains Latham & Watkins to Defend Against Data Breach Lawsuits

March 10, 2021

The American Lawyer reported on March 5 that Accellion, the cybersecurity company whose 20-year old FTA product (file transfer service) was the subject of a hack that affected businesses worldwide, including law firms Goodwin Procter and Jones Day, has retained Latham & Watkins as defense counsel in several lawsuits filed recently in Washington state court and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Latham firm confirmed that it expects to represent Accellion in forthcoming cases as well. Various clients of Accellion are the plaintiffs, but the Big Law firms affected by the breach are not currently listed as plaintiffs. Both Goodwin Procter and Jones Day declined to comment.

Multiple suits have been filed thus far in both Washington and California. One of those suits, Price v. Accellion, is a class action in the Northern District of California on behalf of “all residents of the United States whose data was stolen from Accellion in the data breach or breaches during December 2020 and January 2021.” The suit alleges that Accellion failed to “properly secure and safeguard personally identifiable information that was stored on or shared on” its FTA file transfer service.

The Latham team will be led by Michael Rubin, leader of the firm’s data privacy and security practice and global vice chairman of its technology industry group.

Approximately two months ago, Accellion notified current and former clients, including Goodwin and Jones Day, as well as Australian law firm Allens, that its legacy large file-sharing product, FTA, had been breached and allowed hacker group Clop access to some of the files that had been transferred via FTA.

Clop has listed many businesses on its site as potential targets for ransom, including Jones Day, which it has listed, delisted and then listed again. The hackers made some data from the victims of the hack available on its site to encourage victims to pay up.

More coverage on this story coming tomorrow . . .

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email:  Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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