Breach filing
ArchivedEmployees Retirement System of Texas: 1,248,263 individuals, Oct 2018.
Employees Retirement System of Texas reported a breach of unsecured protected health information to the HHS Office for Civil Rights on 15 October 2018. The filing records the organisation as a health plan in Texas and lists 1,248,263 individuals affected, which makes it the 11th largest of the 633 Texas filings on the register and the 3rd largest of the 369 filings submitted nationally in 2018. Among the 32 Texas filings made in 2018 it ranks 1st.
Individuals affected
1,248,263
As reported to HHS
Modelled cost (IBM 2025)
$200M
Upper bound, method shown
Rank in TX
11th
of 633 Texas filings
Rank in 2018
3rd
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
- Health Plan
- Individuals affected
- 1,248,263
- Breach submission date
- 15 October 2018
- Submission year
- 2018
- Type of breach
- Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of breached information
- Other
- Business associate present
- No
- State
- Texas (TX)
- Portal status
- listed in the HHS OCR breach portal archive
- Rank in Texas by size
- 11th of 633
- Rank in 2018 nationally
- 3rd of 369
- Texas median filing
- 4,055 individuals
- Register id (derived)
- TX-20181015-employees-retirement-system-of-texas
Section F.2 / In context
Where this filing sits in Texas and in 2018
OCR classifies the incident as unauthorized access or disclosure, with the breached information held in another location. Unauthorized Access/Disclosure is the type recorded on 155 of the 633 Texas filings (24%) and on 38% of all filings submitted in 2018. Other appears on 8% of Texas filings.
No business associate is recorded on the filing; 27% of Texas filings do involve one. At 1,248,263 individuals the breach is 308 times the Texas median filing of 4,055 and 312 times the national median of 4,000 across all 7,884 filings. It is one of 149 filings on the register of one million 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.
Texas's breach notification statute (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code 521.053) requires notice to affected residents without unreasonable delay, no later than the 60th day after determining a breach occurred. Its attorney general threshold: 250 or more Texas 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 1,248,263 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 $200M; the 2026 edition's $192 gives $240M. Both are modelled estimates with the method shown, not costs disclosed by Employees Retirement System of Texas. 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.
The covered entity (CE), Employees Retirement System of Texas, discovered one of its members was able to view other individuals' protected health information (PHI) after the member manipulated an editable search field within the CE's online member portal. The PHI potentially affected included the names and social security numbers of approximately 1,248,263 individuals. As a result of the breach, the CE improved safeguards and trained its workforce members on better practices to protect PHI. Further, the CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed.
Section F.5 / Modelled cost
1,248,263 individuals through IBM's per-record figures
Modelled cost / method shown, not a disclosed cost
Upper boundIBM 2025 customer PII, $160 per record
$200M
1,248,263 x $160
IBM 2026 customer PII, $192 per record
$240M
1,248,263 x $192
Method: individuals affected, as reported by Employees Retirement System of Texas 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
Texas statute and the HIPAA rule
State notification statute
Texas: Tex. Bus. & Com. Code 521.053
- Notice to individuals
- Without unreasonable delay, no later than the 60th day after determining a breach occurred
- Attorney general threshold
- 250 or more Texas residents (No later than the 30th day after determining a breach occurred)
- Private right of action
- Limited: Indirect recovery via the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (up to treble economic damages for knowing violations)
- Penalty
- $2,000-$50,000 per violation; additional up to $100 per individual per day, capped at $250,000 per breach
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
Texas filings closest in size
Neighbours by size rank among Texas 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lubbock County Hospital District | Healthcare Provider | 1,461,776 | 22 Nov 2024 | |||
| Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center | Healthcare Provider | 1,290,104 | 7 Jun 2022 | |||
| JDC Healthcare Management LLC | Healthcare Provider | 1,077,635 | 7 Oct 2021 | |||
| Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Frisco | Healthcare Provider | 47,984 | 26 Nov 2018 | |||
| Oprex Surgery (Baytown), L.P. d/b/a Altus Baytown Hospital | Healthcare Provider | 40,000 | 2 Nov 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 4701.
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.