[BreachExchange] Citrix Sued For Not Securing Employee Info Before Data Breach

[Destry Winant]

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/citrix-sued-for-not-securing-employee-info-before-data-breach/

A class action complaint was filed by an ex-employee of Citrix for
damages suffered following the security breach which allowed hackers
to access Citrix's internal assets for roughly six months and to steal
sensitive personal information of both current and former employees.

The plaintiff is Lindsey Howard, "a resident and citizen of Coral
Springs, Florida and former employee of Citrix" and she "seeks to
recover damages, equitable relief, including injunctive relief, to
prevent a reoccurrence of the Data Breach and resulting injury,
restitution, disgorgement, reasonable costs and attorneys’ fees, and
all other remedies this Court deems proper."

She further states that the class action complaint was brought against
the company because it failed to both protect their PII data after
collecting as an employment condition and for not informing its
employees in a timely fashion of what data was stolen in the data
breach.

Plaintiff brings this class action case against Defendant Citrix for
its failures to secure and safeguard its current and former employees’
(and in some cases beneficiaries and/or dependents of those employees)
personal information, including names, Social Security numbers,
financial information, and other personally identifiable information
('PII') (collectively 'Personal Information'), which Citrix collected
as a condition of employment, and for failing to provide timely,
accurate and adequate notice to Plaintiff and other Class members that
their Personal Information had been stolen and precisely what types of
information were stolen.

According to the class action complaint filed with the U.S. District
Court Southern District of Florida, the causes of action are
negligence, violations of the Florida Unfair and Deceptive Trade
Practices Act, breach of implied contract, breach of fiduciary duty,
and breach of confidence.

The data breach notification

As Citrix detailed in the Notice of Data Breach, "cyber criminals had
intermittent access to our network between October 13, 2018 and March
8, 2019, and that they removed files from our systems, which may have
included files containing information about our current and former
employees and, in limited cases, information about beneficiaries
and/or dependents."

Also, "the cyber criminals may have accessed and or removed
information relating to certain individuals who are current and former
employees, as well as certain beneficiaries and dependents. This
information may have included, for example, names, Social Security
numbers, and financial information."

While California's Civil Code 1798.82(a) requires businesses to report
data breaches to the state's Attorney General if more than 500
Californian residents are affected and Citrix did issue a notice of
breach, it failed to include the total number of affected employees in
the letter.

However, as the complaint says, "Citrix employed some 8,200 employees
as of December 31, 2018, and had net revenues of $2.9 billion in
2018."

Damages suffered by class members

The class members explain in their class action complaint that their
private and sensitive information was inadequately protected by Citrix
after failing to implement adequate mitigation measures against the
password spraying attack used by the hackers to infiltrate the
company's network.

According to the plaintiff, the Citrix "data breach was entirely
preventable given that password spraying is a well-known tactic of
cyber attackers," with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
describing indicators and the tactics, techniques, and procedures
(TTPs) used in such attacks in its TA18-086A alert issued on March 27,
2018.

The DHS also recommended mitigation measures — like strengthening
password requirements and implementing MFA — which, if properly
implemented, it would have allowed Citrix to block the attackers from
infiltrating its network also says the complaint.

As the data breach class action complaint also details, Citrix failed
to put in place adequate monitoring systems which led to the company
finding out that its network was breached from the FBI.

Citrix did not have adequate monitoring systems and controls in place
to detect the unauthorized infiltration after it occurred. Indeed,
Citrix, like any company its size storing valuable data, should have
had robust protections in place to detect and terminate a successful
intrusion long before access and exfiltration could expand to
thousands of employee files. In this case, Citrix only learned of the
breach after the FBI warned Citrix its systems were compromised months
after the fact.

After their sensitive information was stolen in the data breach, the
plaintiff and class members now "face years of constant surveillance
of their financial and personal records, monitoring, and loss of
rights."

"The Class is incurring and will continue to incur such damages in
addition to any fraudulent credit and debit card charges incurred by
them and the resulting loss of use of their credit and access to
funds, whether or not such charges are ultimately reimbursed by the
credit card companies," also says the breach class action complaint.