Breach filing
ArchivedSimon Eye Management: 144,780 individuals, Sep 2021.
Simon Eye Management reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 14 September 2021. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Delaware and lists 144,780 individuals affected, which makes it the 4th largest of the 31 Delaware filings on the register and the 69th largest of the 715 filings submitted nationally in 2021. Among the 3 Delaware filings made in 2021 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
144,780
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$23.2M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in DE
4th
of 31 Delaware filings
Rank in 2021
69th
of 715 filings nationally
Section F.1 / The filing
As posted by HHS OCR
Every value below is the portal's own field for this filing, plus its rank within the register.
- Covered entity type
- Healthcare Provider
- Individuals affected
- 144,780
- Breach submission date
- 14 September 2021
- Submission year
- 2021
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Delaware (DE)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Delaware by size
- 4th of 31
- Rank in 2021 nationally
- 69th of 715
- Delaware median filing
- 14,095 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- DE-20210914-simon-eye-management
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Delaware and in 2021
OCR classifies the incident as a hacking or IT incident, with the breached information held in email. Hacking/IT Incident is the type recorded on 22 of the 31 Delaware filings (71%) and on 76% of all filings submitted in 2021. Email appears on 26% of Delaware filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 39% of Delaware filings do involve one. At 144,780 individuals the breach is 10 times the Delaware median filing of 14,095 and 36 times the national median of 4,000 across all 7,884 filings. It is one of 801 filings of 100,000 or more individuals.
As of 28 August 2026 the case is listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive. OCR's closing summary of the case is reproduced in full below.
Delaware's breach notification statute (Del. Code tit. 6, Ch. 12B) requires notice to affected residents without unreasonable delay, no later than 60 days after determining a breach occurred. Its attorney general threshold: 500 or more Delaware residents. The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule ran alongside it: notice to affected individuals and to HHS without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovery, which is the clock that put this filing on the portal.
Multiplying 144,780 individuals by IBM's $160 customer-PII cost per record (Cost of a Data Breach 2025, the figure the site's calculator uses) gives a modelled $23.2M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $27.8M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Simon Eye Management. Because the filing is above the roughly 100,000-record range in which the per-record figure is reliable, the result is an upper bound, not an estimate: fixed costs are spread across far more records at this scale.
Section F.3 / OCR closing summary
The portal's archived description, in full
Written by the Office for Civil Rights when the case was closed and reproduced verbatim from the HHS export.
Simon Eye Management, the business associate (BA), reported that several employees were the subjects of an email phishing scheme that affected the protected health information (PHI) of 144,780 individuals. The PHI involved included names, addresses, Social Security and drivers' license numbers, state identification numbers, dates of birth, financial and claims information, diagnoses, and health insurance information. The BA notified HHS, affected individuals, and the media. In its mitigation efforts, the BA and CE implemented additional administrative, technical, and security safeguards to better protect its sensitive data. Workforce members received additional phishing awareness training.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
144,780 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$23.2M
144,780 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$27.8M
144,780 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Simon Eye Management to HHS, multiplied by IBM's customer-PII cost per record (Cost of a Data Breach 2025 Figure 6 and the 2026 edition). No cost has been disclosed by the entity for this filing; the figure is a planning estimate, not a fact about the breach. IBM's per-record figures come from mid-volume breaches and IBM cautions against applying them to breaches involving millions of records; the site's per-record page explains where the multiplication holds and where it breaks down.
Context: IBM's average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M in the 2026 report ($7.42M in 2025); the global average across all sectors was $4.44M in 2025.
Cost per record: method and limits / Healthcare breach cost, IBM 2026
Section F.6 / Notification clock
Delaware statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Delaware: Del. Code tit. 6, Ch. 12B
- Notice to individuals
- Without unreasonable delay, no later than 60 days after determining a breach occurred
- Attorney general threshold
- 500 or more Delaware residents (No later than when individual notices are sent)
- Private right of action
- No: Statute preserves existing common-law and other statutory rights
- Penalty
- Enforced by the AG Consumer Protection Division; may recover direct economic damages
The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule runs alongside the state statute: notice to affected individuals and to HHS without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovery.
Section F.7 / Peer filings
Delaware filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Delaware filings in 2021, topped up from other years where 2021 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ConnectOnCall.com, LLC | Business Associate | 914,138 | 11 Dec 2024 | |||
| Bayhealth Medical Center | Healthcare Provider | 497,047 | 4 Oct 2024 | |||
| Brandywine Urology Consultants, PA | Healthcare Provider | 131,825 | 27 Mar 2020 | |||
| Easterseals Delaware & Maryland's Eastern Shore | Healthcare Provider | 15,208 | 30 Aug 2021 | |||
| Bayhealth Medical Center, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 565 | 18 May 2021 |
Index / Companion schedules
13 HHS breach register
→Hub: every filing, by state, year and entity.
04 Biggest breaches
→Mega-breaches with primary-source cost figures.
Industry / Healthcare
→IBM 2026: $6.64M average, 13 years at #1.
Regulation / HIPAA penalties
→OCR enforcement tiers and the 60-day rule.
11 50-state laws
→Deadline, AG threshold and penalties per state.
Cost / Per record
→Where the per-record model is reliable.
Provenance
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, Breach Portal (breaches affecting 500 or more individuals), retrieved 2026-08-28. Public domain. Individuals affected and dates as reported by the covered entity.
Portal: ocrportal.hhs.gov breach report. Statutory basis: HITECH Act section 13402(e)(4): the Secretary must post a list of breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals. Breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals are reported to OCR annually and are not posted, so they are not on this register. Status wording follows the portal's two tabs ("Cases Currently Under Investigation" and "Archive") as of 28 August 2026; a filing moves to the archive when OCR closes the case. Modelled costs on this site are a method applied to the reported count, using IBM Cost of a Data Breach per-record figures, and are never a cost disclosed by the entity. This row: hhs-breach-archive__2026-08-28.csv, export row 2952.
Corrections: if you represent a listed entity and the portal row has been amended, email [email protected] with the portal entry and we will re-pull the export.