49ers agree to settle class action lawsuit
Per The Athletic's Daniel Kaplan, the San Francisco 49ers recently agreed to settle a class action lawsuit following a ransomware attack that "exposed personal information of over 20,000 employees, officials and fans". Cybercriminals attacked the team's data servers back in February 2022 and the 49ers failed to notify the affected people until August – some six […]
Per The Athletic's Daniel Kaplan, the San Francisco 49ers recently agreed to settle a class action lawsuit following a ransomware attack that "exposed personal information of over 20,000 employees, officials and fans".
Cybercriminals attacked the team's data servers back in February 2022 and the 49ers failed to notify the affected people until August – some six months later.
Therefore, a former 49ers security staffer and an Atlanta Falcons employee filed state and federal lawsuits "arguing the team is liable for negligence, breach of implied contract and related claims", per Yahoo! Sports.
Per Kaplan, part of the settlement is the creation of new jobs that are designed to prevent this from happening again. The 49ers now to have form and fill an executive vice president of technology position "to oversee IT operations, and hire a dedicated cyber-security IT professional".
The rest of the settlement contains the following:
– Class members are entitled to recoup up to $2,000 for ordinary expenses involved in addressing the breach of their data.
– Those with “documented extraordinary expenses” such as identity theft are eligible for up to $7,500. All can receive two years of identity protection services — worth an estimated $5.65 million just for that service.
– California residents are eligible for an $85 cash payment.
– The four law firms handling the case would get $170,000 in attorney fees total.
The 49ers also have "to add additional mandatory security training for all computer users within the organization, updates to security training policies, and technical enhancements and updates to password requirements and security monitoring", on top of the aforementioned hires.
The exact number of victims is a robust 20,390, but the claims rate is expected to be between just 1%-9%, which is anywhere from 209 to 1,884 people.
You can check out Kaplan's full report, here.
Featured image via Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports
