Globe Life Reports Extortion Threat Involving Customer Data

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An unknown party has sought to extort money from Globe Life Inc. by threatening to expose personal information for at least 5,000 current and potential customers at a subsidiary, the insurance giant recently disclosed.

Globe Life "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," the firm reported in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

"After becoming aware of this, the Company immediately activated its incident response plan and, with the assistance of experienced counsel and external cybersecurity experts, launched an investigation," according to the filing. "The Company has reported this extortion attempt to and is cooperating with federal law enforcement."

Based on the company's investigation so far, Globe Life believes the information relayed by the threat actor "may relate to certain customers and customer leads" that can be traced to subsidiary American Income Life Insurance Co., according to the filing.

This information, it said, includes personally identifiable information 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 people.

"However, the total number of potentially impacted persons or the full scope of information possessed by the threat actor has not been fully verified. This information does not appear to contain personally identifiable financial information such as credit card data or banking information," the company reported.

"Most recently, the threat actor also shared information about a limited number of individuals to short sellers and plaintiffs' attorneys," the filing says. "The threat actor claims to possess additional categories of information, which claims remain under investigation and have not been verified."

So far, the extortion attempts haven't involved the use of ransomware or resulted in an interruption to the company's systems, services or business operations, Globe Life said.

The insurer said it will notify individuals affected by the incident, take steps to protect and remediate the impact for them, and continue to communicate with regulatory authorities. Globe Life believes the incident hasn't materially affected its operations and doesn't expect it to significantly hurt its financial condition or operating results.

A Globe Life spokesperson didn't immediately respond to an email Tuesday seeking more information.

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