Digital Privacy Protection
Your Employee’s Data Was Breached. Now What?
When personal data is stolen, monitoring tells your employees that something has happened. It rarely tells them what to do next. That gap is where a lawyer matters.
In 2024, Americans filed 64,882 complaints about personal data breaches with the FBI. Those breaches cost victims $1.5 billion, and data breaches ranked as the third most reported internet crime of the year (FBI Internet Crime Report, 2024).1 Behind each of those numbers is a person who opened an email, learned their information was exposed, and had no idea what came next.
We hear the same story from HR leaders all the time. An employee gets a breach notice in the mail. It runs three pages. It uses phrases like "unauthorized access" and "affected individuals." It offers a year of free credit monitoring. Then it stops. The employee is left holding a legal problem with no legal help.
That is the part we do not talk about enough. Identity theft and data misuse are not only financial problems. They are legal ones. When someone opens a loan in your employee's name, that debt must be disputed. When a data broker sells information that your employee never agreed to share, laws like the CCPA give that person rights. Rights are only useful if you understand them.
Most people do not. And they should not have to learn privacy laws overnight to help protect their own families.
This is where a legal plan earns its place in a benefits package. With LegalShield®, an employee facing a breach can call a provider law firm and ask a simple question: What are my options? The lawyer can read the breach notice and explain it in plain terms. The lawyer can review a confusing privacy policy before the employee signs it. If the employee needs to defend against identity theft or sue someone for misusing their data, access to representation is there.
That last point changes how the conversation goes. A demand letter on law firm letterhead shifts the tone of a dispute. It tells the other side that your employee is not facing this alone.
There is a workforce angle here, too. Identity theft is not rare, and it is not someone else's problem. In a single year, about 23.9 million Americans age 16 and older were victims of identity theft (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Victims of Identity Theft, 2021). That is close to one in eleven adults. Some of those people are on your clients' payrolls right now. When their data is stolen, they spend work hours on hold with banks and credit bureaus. They can lose sleep. Focus slips. The problem does not stay at home.
For brokers, this is a clean conversation to start at renewal. Every employer already knows cyber threats are rising. Fewer have considered the legal aspects of those threats, and fewer still have given their people a way to access legal advice. A voluntary legal benefit fills that gap at no cost to the employer.
One point is worth stating plainly for clients: this service is for personal matters. Employment and business disputes are not included. That keeps the benefit where it belongs: helping employees and their families through personal legal matters.
The next breach is coming; that is simply the world we work in now. The question your clients should be asking is not whether their employees will be affected. It is whether those employees will have to face it alone.
About 23.9 million Americans age 16 and older were victims of identity theft in a single year, roughly one in eleven adults. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Victims of Identity Theft, 2021
Product Spotlight: LegalShield Digital Privacy & Data Rights
A breach notice is a legal document, and most people have to figure it out on their own. LegalShield changes that. Through Digital Privacy & Data Rights protection, members and their families get provider lawyer help with the legal side of digital threats: reviewing breach notices and privacy policies, advising on rights under laws like the CCPA, sending letters to help stop online harassment, and defending against identity theft. If a member needs to sue over data misuse, representation is available at 25% off the provider lawyer's standard hourly rate.
For an employee, that means a real person to talk to when something goes wrong online. For a broker, it means a modern benefit that answers a threat every client already worries about. Access to legal protection belongs in the same conversation as identity theft protection monitoring, not a step behind it.
Let's Talk
Reach out to your LegalShield Business Solutions representative or email [email protected] to get updated proposals, enrollment materials, and talking points for your next client meeting.