Health Insurer Anthem Reports Massive Data Breach
The nation’s second largest health insurers, Anthem Inc., is the lastest to fall victim to hackers. Anthem reports that as many as 80 million current and former customers have had their account information stolen in a breach last week. Information such as names, birthdays, Social Security numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, medical IDs, and employment data were affected; however, no medical or credit card information was taken. (Read CEO Joseph Swedish’s statement here.)
Anthem is currently working with the FBI and Mandiant, the computer security company hired to evaluate Anthem systems, to further investigate the issue. This hack is “the largest health care breach to date,” said Vitor De Souza, a spokesman for Mandiant.
The breach does not come under HIPAA rules because no actual medical information appears to have been stolen. (HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which was created in 1996 and governs the confidentiality and security of medical information.)
Anthem has said it will notify – by mail and, where possible, email – everyone whose personal information was stored on the compromised database.
We’ve talked about how important system security is before and even predicted that there would be more data breaches this year. Remember, it’s not if, but when, you will be hacked. What are you doing to prepare and protect your personal information? How have you been affected by this latest breach?