A fifth proposed class-action lawsuit was filed Friday by a former employee of Sony Pictures, alleging the Culver City studio failed to protect the personal information of its workforce from computer hackers.
The plaintiff in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit is identified only as Jane Doe. She says her personal information was posted online in November and again this month.
She is not using her true name in her complaint in order to avoid further invasion of her privacy, according to the suit, which alleges Sony violated California laws meant to protect sensitive financial and medical information.
The plaintiff seeks unspecified damages.
Thursday, two more former employees of Sony Pictures sued over the loss of their confidential information.
The complaint was lodged in Los Angeles federal court by Michael Levine and Lionel Felix, who describe themselves as ex-directors of the company’s information technology department.
The Sony Pictures corporate press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Levine and Felix contend Sony didn’t take the proper precautions to defend itself against a cyberattack, in light of a 2011 breach of its PlayStation Network.
The suit seeks class-action status for the nearly 50,000 current and former employees whose data was stolen and posted online by hackers.
“For decades, (Sony) failed, and continues to fail, to take the reasonably necessary actions to provide a sufficient level of IT security to reasonably secure its employees”‘ confidential data, the lawsuit states.
Sony “has failed to take reasonable steps to secure the data of its employees from hacking and other collateral attacks despite its having a duty to safeguard its employees’ data,” according to the complaint. “Only three years ago, Defendant incurred one of the largest data breaches in history, in which 77 million customer records were compromised.”
The FBI today confirmed that North Korea was behind the crippling cyberattack that prompted Sony Pictures to cancel the release of “The Interview,” a Seth Rogan-James Franco comedy involving an assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The film is thought to be the motive for the cyberattack.
The hackers, calling themselves Guardians of Peace, released troves of internal documents containing information that included employees’ Social Security numbers and executives’ salaries.
The breach was expected to cost Sony tens of millions of dollars in computer security upgrades and measures to control the damage.
