Penalty Amount
$975,000
Consumers Affected
45,000
New York Attorney General Letitia James reached a $975,000 settlement with Root Insurance Company over a data breach that exposed the personal information of approximately 45,000 New York residents. The breach, discovered in January 2021, stemmed from Root’s inadequate data security measures, including unencrypted driver’s license numbers in quote PDFs and insufficient controls against automated attacks. In addition to the monetary penalty, Root must implement enhanced data security measures including a comprehensive information security program, data inventory, and monitoring systems.
Root must pay $975,000 in penalties. The company is also required to implement and maintain a comprehensive information security program, develop a data inventory of private information with reasonable safeguards, implement reasonable authentication procedures for access to private information, and maintain a logging and monitoring system with policies to alert on suspicious activity.
In-house legal teams, particularly those in the insurance industry or companies that collect consumer driver’s license information via online tools, should review vendor agreements for web development, data security, and cloud hosting services to ensure they mandate adequate risk assessments of public-facing applications, prohibit plaintext storage of sensitive PII (including driver’s license numbers), and require controls to prevent automated attacks. Data processing and security vendor contracts should also include requirements for maintaining comprehensive data inventories, implementing reasonable authentication procedures for private information access, and deploying logging/monitoring systems with suspicious activity alerting. Additionally, contracts governing online consumer quoting tools should include specific security standards to prevent vulnerabilities like unauthorized prefilling of sensitive data.
Entity
Root Insurance Company
Also known as: Root
Industry
InsuranceOfficial Press Release
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2025/attorney-general-james-secures-975000-auto-insurance-company-over-data-breach
root insurance company assurance of discontinuance 2025
https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/settlements-agreements/root-insurance-company-assurance-of-discontinuance-2025.pdf
New York Attorney General Enforcement Page
https://ag.ny.gov/press-releases
"secured $975,000 in penalties from Root, an auto insurance company"
"$975,000 in penalties"
"March 20, 2025"
"approximately 45,000 New Yorkers"
"OAG found that Root failed to perform adequate risk assessments on its public-facing web applications, did not identify the plain text exposure of consumer personal information, and employed insufficient controls to thwart automated attacks"
"Root’s system exposed full, plaintext driver’s license numbers in a PDF generated at the end of the auto quote process"
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