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The Issue And Its Importance

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Current Event: IST 755 Strategic Management of Information Resources

Syracuse University

Suhas Rajaram

Prof. Raed M. Sharif

[BIGGEST HEALTHCARE BREACH: ANTHEM]

The Issue & its Importance:
In a statement released on 6th February, 2015, Anthem Inc, the largest for profit managed healthcare company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association released a statement that they were target of very sophisticated external cyber-attack. Apparently attackers gained unauthorized access to Anthem’s IT system and have obtained personal information of their current and former members such as their names, birthdays, medical IDs/social security numbers, street addresses, email addresses and employment information, including income data. Highly confidential information of as many as 80 million individuals was compromised in what is the largest known breach of a healthcare company. According to Bloomberg experts, Anthem first detected unusual activity inside its network on Jan. 27, 2015 and verified the intrusion on Jan. 29, 2015. The company has yet to disclose when the initial intrusion began. Anthem CIO, Thomas Miller informed a leading journal that “the attack was first noticed when an administrator found that his database identifier code was being used to run database queries that he hadn 't launched. He says the company 's investigators found that the data had been exfiltrated to a popular online storage site”. According to the study which was conducted by a firm, U.S. and

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