In brief: The Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection has announced an agreement with Metropolitan Life Insurance to provide protections to current and former customers whose personal information was made public.
The full story
The agreement will provide those whose personal information was accidentally made public when a spreadsheet was posted to the Internet by a MetLife employee in 2009.
The company took responsibility for the data breach and provided free credit monitoring and identity theft services to those affected.
"The company acted voluntarily to correct the mistake of its employee and to protect its customers," Connecticut Attorney General Jepsen said. "But this agreement reinforces the need to make clear to anyone in possession of personally identifiable information about their legal requirements to protect it and ensure that it is not made publicly available."
MetLife will pay $10,000 into a fund which will be used to reimburse the state's investigative and enforcement costs and to pay reimbursements to consumers who paid for their own security freezes or monitoring.
Summing up
MetLife is also enhancing employee training policies regarding data integrity and security.
Photo credits: Metropolitan Life
