Anthem Inc., one of the country’s largest health insurers, reported that its database containing personal information for about 80 million of its customers and employees was hacked. The scope of the incursion is not yet know. It has been reported that the Anthem database breach involved tens of millions of records. Anthem said that the breach exposed employee and customers’ names, birthdays, addresses, and Social Security numbers, not most likely not medical information. All of Anthem’s business units are affected by the databreach. Anthem offers Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans in New York, California and other states.
In connection with the Anthem database breach, Anthem has hired FireEye, Inc.’s cybersecurity unit, Mandiant, to investigate.
As reported in The Wall Street Journal:
Anthem, based in Indianapolis and formerly known as WellPoint, covers around 37.5 million people.
The Anthem database breach could rank among the largest cyber attacks. The J.P. Morgan breach compromised contact information for about 76 million households. Home Depot has said 56 million credit-card accounts were compromised, and 53 million customer email addresses stolen. Target’s cyberattack affected 40 million payment cards.
Daniel Nutkis, chief executive of the Health Information Trust Alliance, a nonprofit that helps health-care companies with computer security, said the largest previously known hacker theft from a health-care company was last year’s intrusion at hospital operator Community Health Systems, Inc., which involved records on 4.5 million consumers.
Anthem’s Mr. Miller said the first sign of the attack came in the middle of last week, when a systems administrator noticed that a database query was being run using his identifier code although he hadn’t initiated it. Investigators tracked the hacked data to an outside Web-storage service and were able to freeze it there, but it isn’t yet clear if the hackers were able to earlier remove it to another location, Mr. Miller said. The Web storage service used by the hackers, which Mr. Miller declined to name, was one that is commonly used by U.S. companies.
If you are an Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield subscriber and believe that your private information has been compromised or that you are a victim of this Anthem Database Breach, please contact a GSP attorney to learn more about your rights. GSP attorneys are actively litigating similar matters against Community Health and Target. Please contact Brian Penny, Mark Goldman or Paul Scarlato with any questions you may have.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/02/data-breach-at-health-insurer-anthem-could-impact-millions/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/02/04/health-care-anthem-hacked/22900925/
