Boca Raton, FL --The biggest fright of the Halloween season for one South Florida lead generation company arrived Wednesday morning in the form of a $2 million lawsuit notice concerning a data breach in August of 2015. Health Lead Gen, an online lead generation company specializing in health insurance leads, found out the hard way how serious data breaches are for companies of all shapes and sizes.
Established in 2007, Health Lead Gen was a thriving business, generating and selling nearly 1,000 sales leads per day and looking to gear up for the upcoming open enrollment period. That is, before the consequences of a data breach that leaked the personal health information of over 1 million individuals reared its ugly head.
“We never saw it coming. It’s not like we’re Sony or Target. Why would anyone want to hack into our data?” wondered Scott Manhett the founder and CEO of Health Lead Gen.
The nightmare continues for Manhett and his team as they scramble to secure all of their stored data in hopes to prevent any additional attacks on Health Lead Gen’s records.
“The saddest part is this all could have been prevented.” explained Brad Leiser, owner of a lead distribution software provider based out of Chicago. “Lead generation companies working in any industry, even industries such as health insurance which require personally identifiable information, can easily prevent data breaches and multi-million dollar repercussions by simply deleting all sensitive information that is the focus of all of these penalties.”
Leiser went on to explain that sophisticated lead distribution systems such as boberdoo have built-in safeguards for lead companies that handle the personal and contact information of their leads.
“After you sell the lead, you can immediately remove any of the lead information that you would like, including all of the personally identifiable fields that continue to get companies like Health Lead Gen in serious trouble.”
The message to all lead generation companies rings loud and clear. Shouldn't you be protecting your data?
If you haven’t caught on already, this news story is indeed a hoax. However, we hope that you can take the message to heart. Data security is extremely important to lead companies of all sizes and boberdoo is here to help. We want to work with you to construct a data deletion strategy that will allow you to continue to profit in whichever verticals you operate and keep your business safe in the process.
Give us a call at 800-776-5646 to learn more!