Pemera Blue Cross, a United States of America – based health insurance corporation, has confided in that its systems were infringed upon and their security and associability was breached when cyber criminals hacked the company and made their way in 11 million of their customers’ records. It is the second cyber attack in a row that has been conducted on a medical insurance company in the country this year, after the infamous medical corporation Anthem was cyber criminally attacked just last month.
Premera Blue Cross provided some details on the nature of the hack and said that the company’s customers names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, date of birth, Social Security number, medical claims datan and bank account information may have been accessed in an intrusion in May 2014.
However, the corporation claims that its investigations have not revealed that any information was removed from its systems or misused in any form, to date. It is also working with cyber security firm Mandiant, as well as the FBI, to look into the issue and investigate on the minor details of the issue.
Premera Blue Cross had discovered the breach on the 29th of January 2014, just a little time before its competitor Anthem was cyber criminally attacked. In that case, 80 million members and workers had their private information made public, in other words forcefully leaked.
The cyber criminal attacked affected a lot of customers of Premera Blue Cross, Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alaska, and its associate brands like Vivacity and Connexion Insurance Solutions.
Cyber crime journalist Brian Krebs has contemplated on the fact that a Chinese state – sponsored cyber criminally attacking group known as ‘Deep Panda’ may have been the people behind the cyber criminal attacks on Premera Blue Cross and the Anthem.
The biggest reason for the cyber attacks on both the medical company’s was flaws within the security systems and certain loopholes in the interface which made the accessibility of customer data to the hackers very easy. Anthem has now worked on strengthening its security system and removing its flaws, and therefore the state of security and defense of the interface and internal security programming has become much better – and no other hacks have taken place on the company after the one that occurred earlier. Premera Blue Cross is following the same route and ensuring that before anything else, its interface is well backed up and solidified so that no further hacks can take place on the company. It was also working towards recuperating the damage that has already caused by the hack by fixing the loopholes and flaws in the internal security system of the company.
Premera Blue Cross is offering free credit monitor and identity theft protection services to customers to two years. This is one way in which it is trying to compensate for the customers affected by the hack.
