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August 17, 2023 at 02:07 PM
What You Need to Know
- Genworth says the Massachusetts federal court is efficient and is near the offices of the MOVEit system provider.
- Johns Hopkins notes that some MOVEit suits name it as the only defendant.
- In 2017, the federal courts ended up consolidating the Equifax breach litigation in Atlanta.
Genworth Financial is hoping the federal courts will consolidate the lawsuits resulting from the Cl0p ransomware attack on MOVEit file transfer software users in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts.
Some other parties, including many of the plaintiffs, are supporting MOVEit case consolidation in other federal courts or arguing against the consolidation of the cases listing them as parties.
Related: TIAA Hit With Class-action Suit Over MOVEit Hack
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation will hear arguments Sept. 28 in Lexington, Kentucky, on where the federal MOVEit breach litigation should go.
What It Means
The MOVEit breach litigation could be of keen interest to retirement services clients because early breach notice reports show life insurers and retirement services providers are already sending about 25 million breach notices to annuity owners, life insurance policy owners, retirement account owners, and other customers and clients.
The Cl0p Ransomware Attack
MOVEit is a file transfer system that has been around for decades and is popular with organizations that need to move large amounts of sensitive data.
The Federal Procurement Data System shows that NASA, the Army, the Veterans Affairs Department and other federal agencies and departments have already signed a dozen MOVEit purchase orders so far this year.
Cl0p, a Russian hacking group, found a way to hack MOVEit.
The hack had a big effect on the retirement services sector because PBI Research Services, a firm that helps providers determine whether customers are alive, relied heavily on MOVEit to manage the data used to perform death audit services.
More than 500 U.S. organizations have already reported being affected by the breach, and securities experts have suggested that the final count of the organizations affected could be much higher.
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL panel), was established in 1968. It helps the federal civil courts manage situations in which similar suits are pending in two or more federal courts.
