SEC Chairman Jay Clayton issued a public statement on Cybersecurity (the “Clayton Statement”) last week, disclosing a 2016 attack on the SEC’s database of corporate filings. The intrusion exploited a vulnerability in the test filing component of the EDGAR system, a document repository for disclosures from public companies and issuers, through which the intruder was […]
Data Breach
Eighth Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Scottrade Data Breach Suit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed the district court’s dismissal of a putative class action brought by customers of the brokerage firm Scottrade in the wake of an alleged data breach impacting Scottrade in 2013. The named plaintiffs had asserted several contract-based claims against Scottrade, alleging that Scottrade had […]
Anthem Settles Data Breach Litigation for Record-Setting $115M
Health insurance giant Anthem, Inc. agreed to the largest data breach settlement to-date last week, ending multi-district consumer litigation over a 2015 data breach for $115 million. The data breach, which resulted from a hacker-orchestrated cyberattack following the theft of an employee password, exposed personally identifiable information (“PII”) and protected health information (“PHI”) of nearly […]
Northern District of Illinois Dismisses Barnes & Noble Data Breach Lawsuit
Earlier this month, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered an order dismissing with prejudice a putative class action concerning a security breach affecting PIN pad devices at numerous Barnes & Noble locations. The lawsuit, In re Barnes & Noble Pin Pad Litigation, No. 12-cv-8617 (N.D. Ill.), was brought by […]
Court Holds Forensic Investigator’s Report is Protected from Disclosure
Third-party forensic investigations performed at the direction of counsel are part-and-parcel of virtually every data breach. There has been little case law, however, directly addressing the extent to which the attorney-client privilege and/or work product doctrine protects those forensic investigations from disclosure. Last week, the Central District of California held that, under the specific facts […]