It was stated on Saturday that the State Bar of California is looking into a data breach including confidential attorney discipline that was discovered to have been disclosed online on Thursday.
According to a news release from the state bar, a public website that aggregates nationwide court case records was able to access and display limited case profile data on approximately 260,000 nonpublic state bar attorney discipline case records, as well as approximately 60,000 public court case records.
Earlier on Sunday morning, the State Bar of California reported that “it appears that all State Bar data, both confidential and public, has been taken from the site,” with a note on the site certifying the removal of all State Bar information. “We are still doing an investigation.”
Officials claim that the website appears to be displaying secret court records from other jurisdictions as well as their own.
Since the discovery, state bar officials have taken a number of actions, including informing law enforcement, employing a team of forensic specialists to assist in the probe, and requesting that the organization’s case management software provider conduct an inquiry.
They also claimed to have contacted the hosting provider of the website that had posted the personal material, requesting that the information be removed immediately because the website’s owner’s direct contact information was not easily available to them.
“We sincerely apologize to anyone who has been harmed as a result of the website’s unauthorized publication of nonpublic information,” said Leah Wilson, the executive director of the bar association.
“We take our responsibilities to secure personal data extremely seriously, and we are doing everything we can to rectify this situation as swiftly as possible and avoid similar breaches from occurring in the future.” “We want to act rapidly in order to provide affected persons with disclosures.”
In order to offer ongoing updates and answer concerns about the data breach, the organization has created a webpage at calbar.ca.gov/data-breach to which visitors can access.