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Anthem Agrees to Pay a Record $115 Million to Settle U.S. Data Breach Suits

July 11, 2017

As Reuters reported, Anthem Inc., the largest U.S. health insurance company, has agreed to settle litigation over hacking in 2015 that compromised about 79 million people's personal information for $115 million, which lawyers said would be the largest settlement ever for a data breach.

The deal, announced on June 23^rd, must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, who is presiding over the case. The money will be used to pay for two years of credit monitoring for people affected by the hack. Victims are believed to include current and former customers of Anthem and of other insurers affiliated with Anthem through the national Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

People who are already enrolled in credit monitoring may choose to receive cash instead, which may be up to $50 per person, according to a motion filed in California federal court. Not exactly a huge sum, is it?

The credit monitoring in the settlement is in addition to the two years of credit monitoring Anthem offered victims when it announced the breach in February 2015, according to Anthem spokeswoman Jill Becher, who said the company was pleased to be resolving the litigation. Anthem did not admit wrongdoing, and there was no evidence any compromised information was sold or used to commit fraud, Becher said.

Anthem said in February 2015 that an unknown hacker had accessed a database containing personal information, including names, birthdays, social security numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses and employment and income information. The company said the attack did not compromise credit card information or medical information.

By way of illustrating the magnitude of the settlement, other companies have paid far less to settle – Target agreed to pay $18.5 million and Home Depot agreed to pay $19.5 million.

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