Lansing Community College settles data breach lawsuit

After a data breach may have exposed the information of more than 750,000 current and former students, employees and applicants at Lansing Community College in Michigan, leading to a lawsuit, the college will pay $1.45 million to settle claims . The Lansing State Journal reported Tuesday.

Although a judge must still approve the terms of the settlement (a hearing is scheduled for January), the six plaintiffs who added their names to the complaint will each receive $1,500. The college sent postcards to an unknown number of other possible data breach victims alerting them of the settlement, which could net up to $2,000 per claim.

However, LCC denied any significant damage resulting from the breach, which occurred between December 2022 and March 2023 after an “unauthorized actor” hacked into the college’s internal computer systems, according to attorneys who settled the case. State newspaper.

“There is no evidence indicating that any personally identifiable information of the named plaintiffs, or any other person, was exfiltrated from LCC’s computer networks,” the college said in a court document.

While details of the data breach are not being made public, the college is “stopping use of the vulnerable application attacked by the unauthorized actor,” is increasing verification steps and digital monitoring of the college’s IT systems and reduces the number of authorized administrators. , according to the regulations.

Earlier this year, Hope College in Holland, Michigan, settled a similar lawsuit for $1.5 million after a 2022 data breach, although the State newspaper reported that this breach exposed the personal information of far fewer people than that of LCC.