Premera Blue Cross Breached By Hackers

Hackers have found their way into servers that contained medical information on subscribers to health insurance provider Premera Blue Cross. The health insurance company announced this week that it had been the victim of a cyberattack that could have exposed medical data and financial details on its subscribers. As many as 11 million people could be affected by the breach.

Data hackers are believed to have breached include claims data with clinical information, bank account numbers, social security numbers, birthdays, and more. Disturbingly, the attack may have begun in May of 2014. This certainly isn't the first medical related company to be targeted by hackers, but it is the largest breach ever reported that involved patient medical data.

Out of the 11 million people whose data is believed to have been accessed, about 6 million of that number are from residents of Washington. Employees of some of the largest tech firms in the world including Microsoft and Amazon are among those insured by Premera.

The other 5 million subscribers that are believed among the affected are spread across every other state in the country. Premera says that so far it has no evidence to show that the data was "used inappropriately." Some fear that the medical records will allow criminals to run detailed insurance fraud. Premera believes that the attack in it is not related to the attack on insurer Anthem even though the breach was uncover at Premera on January 29, the same day Anthem disclosed it was attacked.

SOURCE: Reuters