Healthcare Records are Extremely Valuable to Cyber Criminals

Anthem's breach has resulted in heightened anxiety over cyber attacks after information on 80 million people was stolen. A major concern is the stolen social security numbers that were kept on file to track the earnings history of employees, in order to determine Social Security benefits. The breached data was not encrypted, but Anthem claims that this would not have made a difference because the culprit used high-level security credentials to get access to the system.

Last year, the FBI warned healthcare companies that their industry was in serious danger of cyber attacks. Avivah Litan, a cybersecurity analyst at Gartner, estimated that the healthcare industry is 10 years behind the financial services sector with regards to cybersecurity. Litan also predicts that the healthcare industry may be twice as easy for hackers to access personal information than the finance industry.

Summary by MedicalGroups.com

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