Breach filing
ArchivedMississippi State Department of Health: 30,799 individuals, Mar 2018.
Mississippi State Department of Health reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 26 March 2018. The filing records the organisation as a healthcare provider in Mississippi and lists 30,799 individuals affected, which makes it the 10th largest of the 55 Mississippi filings on the register and the 52nd largest of the 369 filings submitted nationally in 2018. Among the 3 Mississippi filings made in 2018 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
30,799
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$4.93M
Method shown, not disclosed
Rank in MS
10th
of 55 Mississippi filings
Rank in 2018
52nd
of 369 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
- 30,799
- Breach submission date
- 26 March 2018
- Submission year
- 2018
- Type of breach
- Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of breached information
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Mississippi (MS)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Mississippi by size
- 10th of 55
- Rank in 2018 nationally
- 52nd of 369
- Mississippi median filing
- 5,220 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- MS-20180326-mississippi-state-department-of-health
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Mississippi and in 2018
OCR classifies the incident as unauthorized access or disclosure, with the breached information held in email. Unauthorized Access/Disclosure is the type recorded on 8 of the 55 Mississippi filings (15%) and on 38% of all filings submitted in 2018. Email appears on 25% of Mississippi filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 33% of Mississippi filings do involve one. At 30,799 individuals the breach is 5.9 times the Mississippi median filing of 5,220 and 7.7 times the national median of 4,000 across all 7,884 filings. It sits in the 10,000 to 99,999 band, which holds 1,938 filings.
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.
Mississippi's breach notification statute (Miss. Code Ann. 75-24-29) requires notice to affected residents without unreasonable delay. Its attorney general threshold: no AG notification requirement at any threshold. 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 30,799 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 $4.93M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $5.91M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Mississippi State Department of Health. For scale, IBM's 2026 average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M, so this filing models at 0.9 times the sector average.
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.
The covered entity (CE), the Mississippi State Department of Health, discovered that an employee accidentally sent an email on January 25, 2018, to contractors working on a joint project with an attached spreadsheet which the employee did not know contained the protected health information (PHI) of 30,799 individuals. The PHI in the spreadsheet included names, identification numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, and sexually transmitted disease laboratory test results from 2017. The contractors confirmed that they did not retain or share the PHI. While the CE and the recipient of the email utilize transmission encryption protocols when sending emails, the CE was unable to confirm that the recipient email server accepted the email in encrypted format. There is no indication that the email had been intercepted. The CE provided timely breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. In response to the breach, the CE sanctioned the employees at fault and provided onsite HIPAA training to employees. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed above and performed its notification obligations.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
30,799 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
ModelledIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$4.93M
30,799 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$5.91M
30,799 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Mississippi State Department of 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
Mississippi statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Mississippi: Miss. Code Ann. 75-24-29
- Notice to individuals
- Without unreasonable delay
- Attorney general threshold
- No AG notification requirement at any threshold
- Private right of action
- No: Statute expressly creates no private right of action
- Penalty
- Unfair trade practice; up to $10,000 per willful violation under the Consumer Protection 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
Mississippi filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Mississippi filings in 2018, topped up from other years where 2018 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singing River Health SystemOpen | Healthcare Provider | 53,888 | 19 May 2026 | |||
| OCH Regional Medical Center, MS | Healthcare Provider | 51,266 | 11 Mar 2025 | |||
| Memorial Hospital at Gulfport | Healthcare Provider | 30,642 | 15 Feb 2019 | |||
| Forrest General Hospital | Healthcare Provider | 1,670 | 1 Feb 2018 | |||
| Memorial Hospital at Gulfport | Healthcare Provider | 1,512 | 28 Feb 2018 |
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 4925.
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.