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Criminal cyber attacks on healthcare information repositories have increased 125% since 2010. With the announcement of the Excellus breach last week, the total number of big-headline medical information compromises reported in 2015 (such as Anthem, Primera, Carefirst) had crossed the mind-blowing demarcation line of 100 million files.
The Excellus breach exposed the names of clients as well as their dates of birth, Social Security numbers, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, member identification numbers, financial account information and claim information. In terms of the type of information compromised and the amount of it, this most recent mega medical information breach, estimated to affect as many as 10 million consumers, was negligibly smaller than the Premera compromise, which exposed 11 million records. Yet it received nowhere near the same amount of media attention.
The reason is something called breach fatigue. Sure, news of the Excellus breach was a lead story, but if you think about it for a moment, was it the first thing people brought up at the proverbial water cooler the day the news broke? Probably not.
Here’s why the Excellus breach should have had tongues wagging:
While you think back to the day the Excellus news broke—there was the talk about the floods in Japan, refugees in Europe, the U.S. Open, the upcoming third episode of “Fear the Walking Dead”—I’m guessing the number of times that particular breach came up was low to nil. That’s fine. We’re not talking about breach fatigue per se. The real issue is that we need to raise and maintain awareness of the threat.
While you reflect upon the non-discussions about last week’s Excellus news, consider how a person might reply to a “Howya doing?” greeting at the water cooler after learning that they have become the victim of medical identity theft. Most likely, they would say something about it. And dollars to donuts, they would say they were in a waking nightmare.
Medical identity theft is hard to detect, and many people still alarmingly do not understand that it’s a real and present danger.
In the first episode of the new AMC show, “Fear the Walking Dead,” it takes a while for Los Angelenos to understand what’s happening, i.e., that the zombie apocalypse has begun. We are in a similar situation with medical identity theft, but in the real-world version, with vigilance on your part, you can better protect yourself.
Here are the telltale signs you’ve been infected.
While we may not be looking at a medical identity theft “apocalypse” a la the zombie shows, movies and comics, medical identity theft can definitely feel apocalyptic when you’re the victim. Protect yourself, know the warning signs and you just might stand a chance.
This story is an Op/Ed contribution to Credit.com and does not necessarily represent the views of the company or its partners.
Image: Ingram Publishing
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