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Georgia customer seeks damages after Southern Co. data breach
A Georgia resident has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Southern Co. after a cyberattack exposed information tied to 400,000 accounts. The suit says 300,000 of those accounts belonged to Georgia Power customers and alleges the company failed to adequately protect customer data.
ATLANTA — A Georgia resident has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Southern Co., the parent company of Georgia Power, following a cyberattack that affected 400,000 customer accounts, according to the company’s earlier disclosure cited in the lawsuit coverage.
Of the affected accounts, 300,000 were associated with Georgia Power customers. Most of the impacted customers were in Georgia, the company said when it announced the breach in early October. The available details do not specify what types of personal information were exposed.
The named plaintiff alleges Southern Co. had a responsibility to encrypt and better safeguard customer information and accounts, and to improve its efforts to detect potential threats. Those claims have not been proven in court.
The suit seeks actual, exemplary, punitive, compensatory, statutory and nominal damages for the proposed class. Plaintiffs are also seeking attorneys’ fees and court costs, including expenses related to expert testimony, and have requested a jury trial.
Southern Co. had not provided a response to a request for comment by the time the lawsuit was reported. The case places renewed scrutiny on how a major utility protects the customer information it holds, with hundreds of thousands of accounts affected across the company’s service area.