Breach filing
ArchivedFreelancers Insurance Company: 43,068 individuals, Mar 2015.
Freelancers Insurance Company reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 24 March 2015. The filing records the organisation as a health plan in New York and lists 43,068 individuals affected, which makes it the 94th largest of the 511 New York filings on the register and the 24th largest of the 270 filings submitted nationally in 2015. Among the 23 New York filings made in 2015 it ranks 3rd.
Individuals affected
43,068
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$6.89M
Method shown, not disclosed
Rank in NY
94th
of 511 New York filings
Rank in 2015
24th
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
- 43,068
- Breach submission date
- 24 March 2015
- Submission year
- 2015
- Type of breach
- Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of breached information
- Network Server
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- New York (NY)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in New York by size
- 94th of 511
- Rank in 2015 nationally
- 24th of 270
- New York median filing
- 5,338 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- NY-20150324-freelancers-insurance
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in New York 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 328 of the 511 New York filings (64%) and on 21% of all filings submitted in 2015. Network Server appears on 49% of New York filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 30% of New York filings do involve one. At 43,068 individuals the breach is 8.1 times the New York median filing of 5,338 and 11 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.
New York's breach notification statute (N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 899-aa) requires notice to affected residents in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, no later than 30 days after discovery. Its attorney general threshold: all breaches (AG, Dept. of State, 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 43,068 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 $6.89M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $8.27M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Freelancers Insurance Company. For scale, IBM's 2026 average cost of a healthcare breach is $6.64M, so this filing models at 1.2 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.
Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Inc., a business associate (BA) of Freelancers Insurance Company, 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 43,068 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.5 / Modelled cost
43,068 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
ModelledIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$6.89M
43,068 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$8.27M
43,068 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Freelancers Insurance Company 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 York statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
New York: N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 899-aa
amended by the SHIELD Act
- Notice to individuals
- In the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, no later than 30 days after discovery
- Attorney general threshold
- All breaches (AG, Dept. of State, State Police) (Aligned with timing and content of individual notices)
- Private right of action
- Limited: Actual damages only; no statutory damages and no attorney-fee recovery; enforced primarily by the AG
- Penalty
- Greater of $5,000 or $20 per failed notification, capped at $250,000; safeguard violations up to $5,000 each
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 York filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among New York 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excellus Health Plan, Inc. | Health Plan | 9,358,891 | 9 Sep 2015 | |||
| Jacobi Medical Center | Healthcare Provider | 90,060 | 28 Apr 2015 | |||
| St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital | Healthcare Provider | 29,156 | 30 Dec 2015 | |||
| Mary Ruth Buchness, MD, Dermatologist, P.C. | Healthcare Provider | 14,910 | 11 Dec 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 5891.
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.