Companies, especially health care providers and insurers, should take measures to prepare for further cyber attacks.
Given the number of high profile data breaches in the past 18 months, it should have come as no surprise that Anthem Insurance Companies recently suffered a massive loss of customer information. Details are still being gathered about the amount of information lost, but there is near certainty that the Anthem attack will be one of the biggest in history (so far).
What is particularly worrisome about the Anthem data breach is the apparent source of the attack along with the methods used. Industry experts have preliminarily laid blame for the attack at the feet of Chinese hackers. Moreover, all indications are that the attack was extremely sophisticated, using advanced malware that would breach the most commonly used cyber defenses as well as more sophisticated defensive measures.
The Anthem breach fits well into a recent pattern of foreign governments or their agents breaking into health care companies, insurers and other organizations storing vast amounts of personally identifiable data such as names, home addresses, social security numbers and other unique bits of information.
The motivation for these attacks is unclear, but speculation centers on enabling medical fraud or, more likely, using the personal identifiers to commit new and hyper-targeted attacks intended to penetrate into sensitive corporate and government networks.
Unfortunately, there is no sign that Anthem-like attacks will slow down, and so companies should proactively take steps to ensure that they are as prepared as possible for a similar event.
To that end, we offer the following suggestions on how health care providers, insurers and others in the health care industry can boost their cyber-preparedness:
- Connect with the National Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center: The National Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (NH-ISAC) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to sharing physical and cyber threat information amongst members of the health care community. NH-ISAC professionals and members can help health care companies learn more about the Anthem attack, including indicators of compromise (IoC) to monitor for. Having such IoCs can be extremely helpful in determining whether your company is being monitored for actually under cyber attack.
Data breaches are now a fact of life for companies. Cyber criminals know that their electronic attacks are likely to be both successful and profitable, and therefore no one should expect any drop in the pace or intensity of such attacks. While companies may not be able to stop every data breach, there are steps they can take to minimize the losses associated with such attacks.