Louisiana Blue Cross Confirms Data Breach

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Louisiana compromised the personal data of about 1,700 brokers via an e-mail last week, exposing information such as Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses, a Blue Cross spokesman said.

The breach occurred Thursday, September 25, when a document containing the data was accidentally attached to a general e-mail being sent to brokers notifying them of a software upgrade. The brokers who received the e-mail were the same people whose information was exposed. The spokesman said no customer data was involved.

Blue Cross recalled the e-mail within moments of sending it, the spokesman said, but the e-mail still made its way to the brokers. The insurer notified them of the error, apologized and requested recipients delete the information and confirm with Blue Cross they had done so.

The company is offering free credit monitoring to the affected brokers for 12 months and has taken steps with its technology systems to assure such an error does not occur again, the spokesman said.

Filed by Kristin Gunderson Hunt of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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