On July 5, 2011, Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller announced a settlement with health insurer WellPoint, Inc. The settlement resolves allegations that the company failed to promptly notify the Attorney General’s office of a data breach as is required by the Indiana Disclosure of Security Breach Act. As part of the settlement, WellPoint must pay a fine of $100,000, provide certain identity-theft-prevention assistance to consumers affected by the breach, and admit that it failed to comply with the law by not notifying Zoeller’s office “without unreasonable delay.”

On May 9, 2008, Iowa Governor Chester Culver signed legislation (SF 2308) requiring any person who owns or licenses computerized data that includes a consumer’s personal information to give notice of a breach of security. The law does not require notification if, after an appropriate investigation or after consultation with the relevant federal, state, or local agencies responsible for law enforcement, the person determined that no reasonable likelihood of financial harm to the consumers whose personal information has been acquired has resulted or will result from the breach. Following is an updated list of the 43 state security breach notification laws (plus District of Columbia and Puerto Rico).

Virginia, West Virginia, and South Carolina are the latest states to pass data breach notification laws, bringing to 42 the total number of states with such laws on the books (including the one state with a law that applies only to public entities, Oklahoma). Listed below are the 41 states with laws that apply to private entities (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico).