2024 Verizon Data Breach Lawsuit Says More Than 63K Employees Impacted by Cyberattack

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Verizon Communications faces a proposed class action lawsuit after disclosing earlier this month that an employee gained unauthorized access last year to a file containing sensitive personal information. 

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The 34-page Verizon data breach lawsuit says that the telecom giant did not discover the incident until December 21, 2023, even though the unauthorized intrusion occurred in September. In all, the sensitive information of more than 63,000 Verizon employees was impacted by the data breach, the case states. 

According to the complaint, Verizon workers’ full names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, gender, national identification, union affiliation and compensation details were exposed in the data breach. The case accuses Verizon of being a “soft target” for cybercriminals in that it failed to have in place adequate and reasonable measures to protect its systems and failed to timely detect the data breach.  

“In short, thanks to [Verizon’s] failure to protect the Breach Victims’ Personal Information, cybercriminals were able to steal everything they could possibly need to commit nearly every conceivable form of identity theft and wreak havoc on the financial and personal lives of potentially millions of individuals,” the lawsuit says. 

Per the case, Verizon notified the Maine Attorney General on February 7, 2024 that a data breach on September 21, 2023 had resulted in the theft of sensitive information, affecting 63,206 people. On the same date this month, Verizon sent victims data breach notices in which it said that an unauthorized user—another Verizon employee—accessed the company’s systems and that a review of the file that was accessed determined that their personal information may have been compromised. 

“Despite detecting the breach in December 2023, and knowing many Plaintiff and Class Members were in danger, Defendant did nothing to warn Breach Victims until another nearly two months later,” the suit says. “During this time, the cybercriminals had free reign to surveil and defraud their unsuspecting victims.” 

The case goes on to accuse Verizon of doing “very little” to help data breach victims, as the company has offered only two years of credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all individuals whose information was compromised by the September 21, 2023 Verizon data breach, including anyone who received notice of the incident. 

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