California Cryobank faces class action suit over 2024 data breach

A class action lawsuit has been filed against sperm donor giant California Cryobank alleging that it failed to protect the sensitive personal information of its patients from a significant data breach.

Earlier in March, California Cryobank announced in a data security incident notice filed with the Office of Maine Attorney General that an unauthorised third party gained access to its IT environment and possibly accessed files stored in its computer systems between April 20, 2024 and April 22, 2024.

CCB said the compromised data included customers’ names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial account numbers and health insurance information. CCB did not share details on the number of affected individuals.

“To help prevent something like this from happening again, we have implemented, and will continue to adopt, additional safeguards and technical security measures to further protect and monitor our systems,” CCB added.

Recently, a class action lawsuit was filed against CCB in the U.S District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that the healthcare provider failed to protect sensitive data from unauthorised access that compromised patients’ personal and health information.

The lawsuit states that the data security incident notice that CCB sent to affected individuals did not include “the identity of the cybercriminals who perpetrated this Data Breach, the details of the root cause of the Data Breach, the vulnerabilities exploited, and the remedial measures undertaken to ensure such a breach does not occur again.”

CCB had previously advised all affected individuals to regularly monitor their credit reports, account and benefit statements and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities, including the police and state attorney general. The sperm bank also offered one year of complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring services through CyberScout to all affected individuals.