Anthem medical data breach

The Anthem medical data breach was a medical data breach of information held by Anthem Inc.

On February 4, 2015, Anthem, Inc. disclosed that criminal hackers had broken into its servers and potentially stolen over 37.5 million records that contain personally identifiable information from its servers. On February 24, 2015 Anthem raised the number to 78.8 million people whose personal information was affected. According to Anthem, Inc., the data breach extended into multiple brands Anthem, Inc. uses to market its healthcare plans, including, Anthem Blue Cross, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Amerigroup, Caremore, and UniCare.Healthlink says it was also a victim. Anthem says the medical information and financial data was not compromised. Anthem has offered free credit monitoring in the wake of the breach. According to Bloomberg News, China may be responsible for this data breach. Michael Daniel, chief adviser on cybersecurity for President Barack Obama, said he would be changing his own password. According to The New York Times about 80 million company records were hacked, and there is fear that the stolen data will be used for identity theft. The compromised information contained names, birthdays, medical IDs, social security numbers, street addresses, e-mail addresses and employment information, including income data.

The data was stolen over a period of weeks the month before the data breach was discovered.

Anthem was not required by law to encrypt the data. However, Anthem faced several civil class-action lawsuits, which were settled in 2017 at a cost of $115 million. Anthem did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement.

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