Multiple lawsuits were filed against Southeast Series of Lockton Companies (Lockton) based in Kansas City, Missouri, because of a data breach report submitted to OCR. The initial report was 1,706 people were impacted, but a later report indicated that over 1 million people were impacted.
Insurance brokerage company Lockton offers insurance and employee benefit services to different industries, such as healthcare, aerospace, banking, real estate, energy, education, and retail.
Scope of the Breach
On February 28, 2025, Lockton submitted a breach report to the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights involving a hacking incident of a network server. Lockton also notified the State Attorneys General about the breach, and mailed notification letters to the impacted individuals. According to the March 20, 2024 breach notification letters, an unauthorized party got access to one Lockton account and computer and stole some files on November 20, 2024. Although the data compromise happened only for a few hours, the threat actor stole sensitive data.
Scope of Compromised Data
The stolen data included highly sensitive personal information:
- Names
- Phone numbers
- Addresses
- Email addresses
- Birth dates
- Social Security numbers
- Financial data
The impacted people were given two years of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. Since the initial filing of the breach report, the total number of impacted people has gone up from 1,706 to 1,025,956. This incident is currently ranked as the second-biggest healthcare data breach involving a HIPAA-covered entity in 2025.
Legal Repercussions
Multiple law agencies have initiated investigations, and there are 11 class action lawsuits filed against Lockton. Allegedly, Lockton failed to implement acceptable and proper cybersecurity procedures to stop unauthorized access to sensitive information. The lacking security allowed cybercriminals to exploit and access its system and steal sensitive information. The lawsuits claim negligence and seek punitive and compensatory damages, a jury trial, attorneys’ fees, and legal expenses.
Image credit: Rafael Henrique, AdobeStock
