Globe Life Targeted By 'Unknown Threat Actor' In Extortion Attempt -- MarketWatch

MarketWatch · 10/17 11:40

Globe Life Inc. (GL) has been targeted in an extortion attempt, the life insurance company revealed Thursday. In an SEC filing, Globe Life said that it recently received communications "from an unknown threat actor seeking to extort money from the company in exchange for not disclosing certain information held and used by the company and its independent agents." Globe Life said that it immediately activated its incident response plan and, with the assistance of experienced counsel and external cybersecurity experts, launched an investigation. "The company has reported this extortion attempt to and is cooperating with federal law enforcement," Globe Life added. Based on the company's ongoing investigation, Globe Life believes that the information relayed by the threat actor may relate to certain customers and customer leads that can be traced to its subsidiary, American Income Life Insurance Company. "This information includes certain personally identifiable information categories such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, and in some instances Social Security numbers, health-related data, and other policy information for approximately 5,000 individuals," Globe Life said, in the filing. However, the total number of potentially impacted people or the full scope of information possessed by the threat actor has not been fully verified, according to Globe Life. "This information does not appear to contain personally identifiable financial information such as credit card data or banking information," the company said. "Most recently, the threat actor also shared information about a limited number of individuals to short sellers and plaintiffs' attorneys. The threat actor claims to possess additional categories of information, which claims remain under investigation and have not been verified," Globe Life added. The extortion attempts have not involved the use of ransomware or caused an interruption to the company's systems, services, or business operations, according to Globe Life's filing. The life insurance company said it will notify individuals affected by the incident and "remediate the impact for them," and does not expect that the incident is likely to have a material impact on the company.

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October 17, 2024 07:40 ET (11:40 GMT)