Excerpt
SUMMARY: Hackers broke into a database at Anthem, the nation’s second largest health insurance provider, which contained names, social security numbers, income data and addresses of 80 million people. Judy Woodruff speaks with Mark Bower of Voltage Security about who might be behind the attack and why they would want to target an insurer.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Today’s disclosure of a major hacking attack on the nation’s second-largest health insurer, Anthem, is setting off alarms about cyber-crime at a new level.
Hackers were able to crack a database that included records for 80 million people. The cyber-criminals were able to get names, addresses and e-mails, as well as Social Security numbers and income. But hospital and doctor information related to patients wasn’t hacked.
Bloomberg News reported that investigators believe Chinese state-sponsored hackers are involved.
Mark Bower is a noted expert on these issues. He’s also a vice president at Voltage Security in California.
Mark Bower, welcome.
So, compared to the hacks we have seen until now, how serious is this one?
MARK BOWER, Voltage Security: Well, certainly, we have just started the year off with a bang in terms of data breaches; 80 million records is a very substantial amount, so this is quite a serious attack
And the nature of the data, you have got lots of personal data that can potentially be monetized. It’s going to be very inconvenient for those individuals and also quite costly for the organization that this affects.
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