Connecticut Attorney General Investigation Sheds Light on Meaning of "Unreasonable Delay" in Data Breach Context
On November 9, 2009, Connecticut’s Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, announced an investigation of whether Blue Cross and Blue Shield (“BCBS”) violated Connecticut’s data breach notification law by waiting until two months after a data breach had occurred to notify affected Connecticut residents. The data breach, which Attorney General Blumenthal called “one of the most sizable and significant in Connecticut’s history,” involved the theft of a laptop containing confidential unencrypted data from the car of a BCBS employee in late August. BCBS notified affected Connecticut residents of the breach in late October.
The data contained on the stolen laptop included the names, addresses and Taxpayer Identification Numbers of approximately 19,000 health care providers in Connecticut. The breach also involved thousands of Social Security numbers (“SSNs”), since an estimated 16-22% of individual health care providers use their SSNs as Taxpayer Identification Numbers. BCBS confirmed that the breach did not involve any medical information or patient information.
Connecticut’s data breach notification law requires any person who “conducts business in” Connecticut and who “owns, licenses or maintains computerized data that includes personal information” to disclose any breach of security to affected Connecticut residents “without unreasonable delay.” Attorney General Blumenthal is requesting more details from BCBS about the breach, including a list of impacted health care providers, the credit monitoring services and other protections that BCBS is offering those providers, as well as BCBS’s policies and procedures for responding to data breaches. He noted that failure to comply with Connecticut’s data breach notification law constitutes an unfair trade practice that may subject BCBS to fines of up to $5,000 for each Connecticut resident affected by the breach and require BCBS to provide restitution to those affected residents.
