The massive data hack on insurance provider Anthem has broad implications.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
As many as 80 million people may be at risk from a massive data hack on insurance provider Anthem.
OregonLive.com and the Associated Press reported on how that could affect one of the Willamette Valley’s largest employer:
An Anthem health plan is one of the primary options for Intel, which employs 17,500 in Oregon, more than any other business. It wasn’t immediately clear, though, how many other Oregon employers work with Anthem.
Anthem sent an e-mail to members Thursday notifying them of the breach promising to notify them individually if their personal information was accessed.
Anthem’s practices in regards to encryption have come to light in the wake of the breach.
The Portland Business Journal reported on the company’s policy to not encrypt the social security numbers of its members to boost efficiency:
At a certain point, companies handling such data must decide how much security is hampering authorized employees’ ability to do their jobs efficiently, The Wall Street Journal explained, and though it appears Anthem (NYSE: ANTM) encrypted data moving out of its database, it didn’t do so for information simply being stored. Instead, a spokesperson told the WSJ, the company used other security measures to protect that information.
Despite calls to encrypt that data, some experts are still warning that encryption is no panacea. A privacy lawyer quoted by the WSJ noted that the data must be unencrypted at some point to become useful, and so a dedicated hacker could eventually exploit that process.
