Breach filing
ArchivedHorizon Healthcare Services, Inc., doing business as Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, and its affiliates: 839,711 individuals, Jan 2014.
Horizon Healthcare Services, Inc., doing business as Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, and its affiliates reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 3 January 2014. The filing records the organisation as a business associate in New Jersey and lists 839,711 individuals affected, which makes it the 5th largest of the 174 New Jersey filings on the register and the 5th largest of the 314 filings submitted nationally in 2014. Among the 8 New Jersey filings made in 2014 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
839,711
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$134M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in NJ
5th
of 174 New Jersey filings
Rank in 2014
5th
of 314 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
- Business Associate
- Individuals affected
- 839,711
- Breach submission date
- 3 January 2014
- Submission year
- 2014
- Type of breach
- Theft
- Location of breached information
- Laptop
- Business associate present
- Yes
- State
- New Jersey (NJ)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in New Jersey by size
- 5th of 174
- Rank in 2014 nationally
- 5th of 314
- New Jersey median filing
- 5,727 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- NJ-20140103-horizon-healthcare-services-doing-busine
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in New Jersey and in 2014
OCR classifies the incident as theft, with the breached information held in a laptop. Theft is the type recorded on 18 of the 174 New Jersey filings (10%) and on 41% of all filings submitted in 2014. Laptop appears on 6% of New Jersey filings.
A business associate is recorded as present on the filing, as it is on 27% of New Jersey filings. At 839,711 individuals the breach is 147 times the New Jersey median filing of 5,727 and 210 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.
New Jersey's breach notification statute (N.J. Stat. 56:8-161 et seq.) requires notice to affected residents within 30 days of reasonably determining a breach occurred (7 days for social-media-platform breaches). Its attorney general threshold: all breaches (Division of Consumer Affairs and State Police). 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 839,711 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 $134M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $161M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Horizon Healthcare Services, Inc., doing business as Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, and its affiliates. 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.
Horizon Health Care Services, the covered entity (CE), reported that two unencrypted laptop computers were stolen from its Newark, NJ headquarters, affecting approximately 839,711 individuals. The types of protected health information (PHI) involved in the breach included names, dates of birth, insurance identification numbers, and in some instances social security numbers and/or clinical information. The CE provided breach notifications to HHS, affected individuals and the media. During the course of the investigation, the CE conducted a comprehensive inventory of all its computers containing PHI to ensure that they were fully encrypted, enhanced configuration settings on workstations to encrypt email containing electronic PHI, and disabled features on all devices that permitted exporting of data to removable storage media. It also implemented new procedures for information technology purchasing, decision-making and management, improved facility access controls, and retrained its workforce. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions noted above.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
839,711 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$134M
839,711 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$161M
839,711 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Horizon Healthcare Services, Inc., doing business as Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, and its affiliates 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
New Jersey statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
New Jersey: N.J. Stat. 56:8-161 et seq.
- Notice to individuals
- Within 30 days of reasonably determining a breach occurred (7 days for social-media-platform breaches)
- Attorney general threshold
- All breaches (Division of Consumer Affairs and State Police) (Before individual notifications are sent)
- Private right of action
- Yes: Direct PROA under the Consumer Fraud Act for ascertainable losses, including treble damages
- Penalty
- $10,000 first offense, $20,000 per subsequent offense; treble damages and fees for private plaintiffs
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
New Jersey filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among New Jersey filings in 2014, topped up from other years where 2014 has too few. Filings of 10,000 or more link to their own page.
| Covered entity | Type | Individuals | Submitted | Breach type | Location | BA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CareCloud, Inc.Open | Business Associate | 3,756,469 | 24 Jul 2026 | |||
| GRM Information Management Services | Business Associate | 1,700,000 | 11 Feb 2011 | |||
| CentraState Healthcare System, Inc. | Healthcare Provider | 617,901 | 10 Feb 2023 | |||
| Sutherland Healthcare Solutions, Inc. | Business Associate | 342,197 | 22 May 2014 | |||
| Jersey City Medical Center | Healthcare Provider | 36,400 | 7 Aug 2014 |
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 6263.
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.