A cyber-attack against Anthem, the second-largest health insurer in the United States, was recently reported. The attack exposes 80 million records of previous and current members, along with employees of the company.
After encountering increased security in response to massive breaches of other companies, such as Target and Home Depot, hackers have now been targeting healthcare companies. According to The Boston Globe:
“Experts say health care companies can offer many entry points for crooks. And once criminals get personal information, they can use it for more extensive and lucrative schemes.
‘If someone steals your credit card and home address, they might be able to buy something, but you can usually get that locked down quickly,’ said Tony Anscombe, a security expert at AVG Technologies. ‘With medical records and a Social Security number, it’s not so simple.’’’
The breach in security, which was discovered a month ago, exposed social security numbers, income data and other personal information. The Washington Post reports that the attacks have the door open for future theft and fraud:
“Medical information could be exploited, for example, to file false insurance claims and buy prescription drugs, and attackers could extort cash from policyholders desperate to keep their private medical data under wraps.
‘Health-care records are the new credit cards,’ said Ben Johnson, chief security strategist at cybersecurity firm Bit9 + Carbon Black. ‘If someone gets your credit card number, you cancel it. If you have HIV, and that gets out, there’s no getting that back.’”
Most recently, Bloomberg reported that investigators have discovered evidence linking the hacks to a Chinese state-sponsored entity named “Deep Panda,” which has been found to be behind many of the attacks against healthcare providers over the past year.
The FBI is conducting a further investigation into the matter.
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