Commercial Head of Region

LA County investigates Farmers Insurance over fire claims from Eaton and Palisades fires. While rebuilding for affluent property owners has moved forward, Zar emphasized that protecting vulnerable populations remains a critical hurdle. Chris Woodward | The Center Square contributor Published: September 14, 2026 10:57pm (The Center Square) - Los Angeles County is investigating Farmers Insurance over its handling of claims from the Eaton and Palisades fires, focusing on potential violations of California's Unfair Competition Law. Affected policyholders report severe delays, underpayments, claim denials and refusals to cover living expenses or necessary testing and remediation for hazardous substances like lead, asbestos, and chromium. "We are committed to thoroughly investigating Farmers' actions and making sure they are treating claimants fairly," said County Counsel Dawyn R. Harrison in a news release. "These claims need to be resolved quickly and in full compliance with the law." Los Angeles County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Lindsey P. Horvath have claimed that after faithfully paying their premiums, wildfire survivors are being abandoned by Farmers Insurance and forced into the unacceptable choice between financial ruin or returning to homes dangerously contaminated with lead and asbestos, prompting the County to step in and hold the insurer legally accountable. "That's an unfair business practice that needs to end now," Barger told The Center Square in an email "My constituents shouldn't have to walk back into homes with lead and asbestos because an insurance company won't pay for the test that would prove it's there. We are going to hold Farmers Insurance accountable to the law, and if they've broken it, they will answer for it."" The Center Square reached out to Horvath for comment and did not receive a response by press time. Meanwhile, local stakeholders say the intervention is long overdue. "I heard about it from the county just shortly after they filed it, and I thought it was a great idea," said Maryam Zar, CEO of the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce and president of the Palisades Recovery Coalition, in a phone interview with The Center Square. Zar noted that grassroots groups, such as the Every Fire Survivors Network (formerly the Eaton Fire Survivors Network) founded by Joy Chen, recognized early on that a family's mental health and overall ability to recover hinged directly on how their insurance disputes played out. While visible signs of progress are emerging - with homes currently under construction or moving through the permitting process in the Palisades - Zar warned that the recovery will take time. "We're talking about years," Zar said, pointing out that approaching the two-year mark reveals deep systemic hurdles. "The more challenging stuff remains, the hillside streets, the dead-end streets, the narrow windy roads, the people who can't afford to build back." While rebuilding for affluent property owners has moved forward, Zar emphasized that protecting vulnerable populations remains a critical hurdle. "It's not hard to find wealthy people to buy land and build homes," Zar said. "The challenge is to bring back the older people, the fixed-income people, the young families that didn't make a lot of money but wanted to live here for the school system. That is still a challenge because we don't still have a structure for the recovery. It's still very much build if you can." Carly Kraft, Media Relations Manager for Farmers Insurance, said the wildfires have had "a profound impact on many customers," and the company's priority is helping them recover and move forward. "Since the fires, we have dedicated significant resources to assisting affected policyholders and providing support throughout the claims process," Kraft told The Center Square via email. "Serving our customers during difficult times is at the heart of what we do, which is why each claim is reviewed individually, taking into account the specific circumstances of the loss and the coverage provided under the policy." Kraft added that Farmers remains focused on handling claims with "care, consistency and attention" to each customer's unique situation. "As always, we operate in accordance with applicable laws and regulations," Kraft said. "We do not believe the inquiry accurately characterizes our actions or practices and will cooperate through the appropriate process." Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit in late August against State Farm for similar claims.

CRM Data Breach statistics: what sales teams must know. CRM data breach statistics show third-party involvement doubled to 30% in 2025, and breaches now cost $4.44 million on average. TL;DR: CRM data breach statistics tell a blunt story. Third-party involvement in confirmed breaches doubled from 15% to 30% in a single year, and a wave of 2025 to 2026 attacks tied to Salesforce-connected CRM data hit Google, Cisco, Farmers Insurance, and Allianz Life. The average breach now costs $4.44 million globally, and as many as 70% of customers say they will walk away from a company after their data leaks. For sales teams, that makes CRM security a revenue problem, not just an IT problem. CRM platforms, especially Salesforce-connected systems, have become one of the most frequently named single points of failure in recent breach disclosures. At least half a dozen major companies reported CRM-linked breaches within roughly a year, and the pattern keeps repeating because CRM systems concentrate exactly the data attackers want in one place. Cisco disclosed that attackers stole over three million Salesforce records containing personal data and internal corporate information after a voice phishing campaign against its employees. Around the same time, the same hacking group accessed over 2.5 million customer records from a Google database run through Salesforce, and Farmers Insurance confirmed a breach of a third-party database that affected 1.1 million customers. Allianz Life, meanwhile, saw the personal information of the majority of its roughly 1.4 million US customers exposed after an unauthorized actor accessed a third-party CRM system the company relied on. Separately, a supply chain attack linked to the Salesloft platform is estimated to have affected over 700 organizations that had connected it to their CRM environments. None of these companies were breached because their own CRM software was inherently weak. They were breached because of the connections around it: a vishing call to an employee, a compromised OAuth token, a vulnerable integration. That is exactly what the broader breach data confirms. Most CRM breaches trace back to people and connections, not raw software flaws. Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found that 60% of confirmed breaches involved a human element such as phishing or social engineering, and that third-party involvement in breaches doubled from 15% to 30% in a single year as CRM and SaaS integrations multiplied. Credential abuse was the single leading initial attack vector, present in 22% of breaches, followed by phishing at 16% and exploited vulnerabilities at 20%, up 34% year over year. The Cisco and Google incidents both followed the same playbook: attackers called employees while posing as IT or HR staff and talked them into installing a fake connected app, which then handed over access to real Salesforce data. That is a human-element breach and a third-party breach at the same time, which is why the two categories are climbing together rather than separately. Every additional disconnected tool a sales team plugs into its CRM is, in effect, one more vendor that has to be trusted, patched, and monitored. Customer patience for breached companies is thin and getting thinner. A global consumer survey conducted for Gemalto (now Thales) found that 70% of consumers would stop doing business with a company after it suffered a data breach, and a separate PCI Pal survey found that 83% of US consumers would pause spending at a breached business for several months, with 21% saying they would never return at all. That matters for sales leaders specifically, not just security teams, because the records sitting in a CRM are the same records reps are actively working to close. A breach does not just trigger a cleanup project. It puts live pipeline and renewal relationships directly at risk, right at the moment prospects and customers are deciding whether they still trust the company enough to keep buying. IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report puts the global average at $4.44 million per incident, which is actually a 9% drop from the year before and the first decline in five years. In the United States specifically, the average climbs to $10.22 million, more than double the global figure, driven by regulatory fines and slower detection. Costs vary sharply by cause and industry. Breaches caused by malicious insiders were the most expensive per incident at $4.92 million, and supply chain style compromises, the same pattern behind several of the recent CRM incidents, averaged $4.91 million and took the longest to detect and contain at roughly 267 days. Healthcare remained the single costliest industry for the fifteenth consecutive year at $7.42 million per breach. Detection speed itself is a major cost lever: the average global breach lifecycle dropped to 241 days in 2025, the shortest in nine years, and organizations using AI and automation extensively identified and contained breaches roughly 80 days faster while saving about $1.9 million per incident compared to peers without those tools. The data points to a short list of habits that move the needle: fewer disconnected tools touching customer data, tighter access controls, and faster detection. Organizations with mature, automated monitoring consistently detect and contain breaches faster and cheaper than those relying on manual review, and every third-party integration added to a CRM is another link that needs the same scrutiny as the core system. In practice that means enforcing multi-factor authentication for anyone with CRM access, using role-based permissions and field-level restrictions so reps only see what they need, keeping an audit trail of who touched which record, and, critically, reducing the number of separate apps and vendors that each hold a copy of the same lead or customer data. Consolidating channels into fewer, more tightly controlled systems is one of the simplest ways to shrink the attack surface that third-party involvement exploits. Teams evaluating vendors on this basis often start by comparing how different CRM platforms handle native integrations versus bolted-on third-party apps. Curious how this looks with your own pipeline? Pixelwand was built around the idea that fewer disconnected tools touching your lead and customer data means fewer places for something to go wrong. It automatically unifies leads and deals from calls, WhatsApp, web forms, and email into one pipeline, rather than scattering that same data across a patchwork of separate apps each needing its own security review. Calling runs natively through Twilio, and WhatsApp Business messaging is attached directly to the lead or deal record instead of living in a standalone app outside the CRM's visibility. Gmail and Outlook sync auto-log email threads and calendar events straight onto the record, and Slack notifications keep the team aware of pipeline activity without exporting data into yet another disconnected system. Custom fields, custom statuses, assignment rules, and pinned or public views also give admins granular control over who sees what, which is exactly the kind of access discipline the breach data says matters. Teams that want to see how the pipeline, calling, and messaging pieces fit together can look through the full feature set or compare it against other platforms before deciding what to consolidate. Frequently asked questions. How many data breaches now involve a third party like a CRM vendor? Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found third-party involvement in confirmed breaches doubled from 15% to 30% in a single year, driven largely by chained attacks through connected CRM and SaaS integrations. What is the average cost of a CRM or customer data breach? IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report puts the global average at $4.44 million per incident. In the United States specifically, the average climbs to $10.22 million, more than double the global figure. What percentage of customers stop buying after a data breach? A global Gemalto (Thales) survey found 70% of consumers say they would stop doing business with a company after a data breach. A separate PCI Pal survey found 83% of US consumers would pause spending for months, and 21% would never return. How long does it take companies to detect a data breach? IBM's 2025 report found the average global breach lifecycle, from first intrusion to full containment, was 241 days, the shortest it has been in nine years, though healthcare breaches still take 279 days on average.