Breach filing
ArchivedGeorgia Department of Community Health: 557,779 individuals, Mar 2015.
Georgia Department of Community Health reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 2 March 2015. The filing records the organisation as a health plan in Georgia and lists 557,779 individuals affected, which makes it the 9th largest of the 226 Georgia filings on the register and the 8th largest of the 270 filings submitted nationally in 2015. Among the 7 Georgia filings made in 2015 it ranks 1st. Georgia Department of Community Health submitted 1 further report on the same day (355,127 individuals); this page covers the largest and lists the others below.
Individuals affected
557,779
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$89.2M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in GA
9th
of 226 Georgia filings
Rank in 2015
8th
of 270 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
- Health Plan
- Individuals affected
- 557,779
- Breach submission date
- 2 March 2015
- Submission year
- 2015
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Network Server
- Business associate present
- Yes
- State
- Georgia (GA)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Georgia by size
- 9th of 226
- Rank in 2015 nationally
- 8th of 270
- Georgia median filing
- 5,232 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- GA-20150302-georgia-department-of-community-health
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Georgia and in 2015
OCR classifies the incident as a hacking or IT incident, with the breached information held in a network server. Hacking/IT Incident is the type recorded on 143 of the 226 Georgia filings (63%) and on 21% of all filings submitted in 2015. Network Server appears on 46% of Georgia filings.
A business associate is recorded as present on the filing, as it is on 34% of Georgia filings. At 557,779 individuals the breach is 107 times the Georgia median filing of 5,232 and 139 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.
Georgia's breach notification statute (Ga. Code 10-1-912) requires notice to affected residents in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay. Its attorney general threshold: no general AG requirement (reporting agencies at 10,000+ 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 557,779 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 $89.2M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $107M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Georgia Department of Community Health. 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.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, a business associate (BA) of Georgia Department of Community Health, the covered entity (CE), stored the CE's electronic protected health information (ePHI) on computer servers belonging to its parent corporation, Anthem, Inc. Anthem experienced a series of cyberattacks which exposed the electronic protected health information (ePHI) of almost 79 million people, affecting 557,779 individuals who received health insurance from the CE. The ePHI involved included names, social security numbers, medical identification numbers, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, and employment information. OCR reviewed the BA agreement and determined that it appeared to comply with the requirements of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. OCR opened a separate review of Anthem, which resulted in Anthem agreeing to pay a monetary settlement and undertaking a robust corrective action plan to comply with the HIPAA Rules.
Section F.4 / Same-day filings
1 further report by Georgia Department of Community Health on 2 March 2015
Separate rows on the HHS portal with their own counts; this page covers the largest and lists the rest here rather than giving each its own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Department of Community Health | Health Plan | 355,127 | 2 Mar 2015 |
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
557,779 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$89.2M
557,779 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$107M
557,779 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Georgia Department of Community Health 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
Georgia statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Georgia: Ga. Code 10-1-912
Personal Identity Protection Act
- Notice to individuals
- In the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay
- Attorney general threshold
- No general AG requirement (reporting agencies at 10,000+ residents)
- Private right of action
- No: No direct individual lawsuits for notification failures
- Penalty
- No explicit statutory penalties; possible exposure under the Fair Business Practices Act
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
Georgia filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Georgia filings in 2015, topped up from other years where 2015 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Young Consulting LLC | Business Associate | 961,003 | 11 Sep 2024 | |||
| ApolloMD Business Services, LLC | Business Associate | 626,540 | 10 Feb 2026 | |||
| Peachtree Orthopaedic Clinic | Healthcare Provider | 531,000 | 18 Nov 2016 | |||
| Georgia Department of Community Health | Health Plan | 355,127 | 2 Mar 2015 | |||
| Aflac | Health Plan | 6,166 | 15 May 2015 |
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 5914.
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.