Anthem Inc.'s Medical Record Breach: A Cybersecurity Crisis

On February 4, 2015, Anthem Inc., a healthcare company, experienced a massive data breach that compromised the personal and medical information of over 80 million customers and employees. The hack was performed by hackers believed to be from China who tricked an employee into clicking on a phishing email. The stolen data included names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, employment information, and income data. Anthem Inc. failed to implement adequate cybersecurity measures, including two-factor authentication and monitoring systems, allowing the breach to occur. The company has since implemented these measures and offered free credit monitoring to affected customers.

RUNNING HEAD: Data Breach Incidents
DATA BREACH INCIDENTS

1
DATA BREACH INCIDENTS
PART A
The incident of Computer security breach in Verizon Enterprise Solutions:
Verizon Enterprise Solutions was established in January 2006 and came up again as Verizon
Enterprise Solutions on 1 January 2012. And the president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions is
Chris Format. This organization is a division of Verizon communications which is based in New
Jersey and offers services and products like information technology, cloud computing, data
storage, etc. for the government customers and businesses across the world.
The Issue
Recently Verizon Enterprise suffered the computer security data breach because of the security
issues and in this the database of customer records of 1.5 million was stolen and was raised for
sale on the dark web. Verizon stated that there was no effect on consumer customer data, but this
breach affected the customers badly.
The breach was highlighted when the stolen records of the business customers were raised for
sale, and the customers have informed accordingly. The price which was offered was $100,000
for all the customers and $10,000 for single block of 100,000 as the database was put up on an
underground hacking forum. The report stated that only the customer names and contact numbers
had been used. The stolen records were used for phishing attacks upon customers of the Verizon.
The hackers wanted to target the arm of the Verizon which provides products and services which
also involved online security and cloud computing. The hackers offered the database in various
formats and was available in MongoDB which stated that the hacker somehow managed to put
the data at Verizon to delete the contents of customers. The credit card information of customers
with hashed passwords was also stolen. (Lanaria, 2016)
Hacking
This phishing attack took place through emails in which the hackers manipulated and convinced
the customers so that they can share their details. The hacker got an access of the network and
data with the help of phishing emails which contained the corrupted document, and this helped
the hacker to find susceptibility through other systems and got the important data. This helped
the hacker to find a particular system to get a hold on it in order to get the information of the
customers. The hackers send the emails to all the users, and they were told to verify their
personal information and share their credit card payment information, contact numbers, etc. and
by this phishing scam the hackers stole the important data of Verizon Enterprise Solutions.
The computer security breach at Verizon occurred because of the slackness of employers like
sharing information with the wrong customer and the unsecured dumping of the personal and
important data. And the other issue was that the employees use the customer's data in
inappropriate manner for their own benefit, and this causes huge loss to the organization and its
customers. (Loshin, 2016)
Preventive Measures
The possible solutions to prevent the data from stealing are as follows:

2
DATA BREACH INCIDENTS
 Email filters can be executed so that the mails can be separated into different categories
in an organized manner and in case the hacking taking place then the complete
information would not be leaked out, and this will help in tracking the hacker.
 Training can be given to the engineers of Verizon so that they can find the phishing
attackers and can immediately deal with them in order to prevent the data from being
stolen.
 A secured authentication process can be embodied so that the effect of hacking can be
minimized and the network will remain protected from being hacked, and the data of
customers will remain secured.
 The networks can be watched carefully to find the signs of hacking. The workers have to
keep an eye on the networks of data in order to catch the hacker so that the data of
customers remain secured.
 Security systems should be up-to-date on all the networks. An organization should ensure
that the security systems are updated in order to protect the data from the phishing scams,
and the security system should keep on changing so that the hacker doesn't get access to
it.
 Verizon can give the guidance to its customers about not sharing their information with
credit card payment, name, contact details, etc. to anyone via email. And the customers
should ask more and more questions from the sender and should remain alert from this
kind of emails and inform the organization as soon as possible so that the data can be
protected from being hacked and the preventive measures can be implemented by the
company as soon as possible.
PART B
The Issue
The 2015 Anthem medical data breach case was the breach of medical information being held by
Anthem Inc. The criminal hackers broke various servers of Anthem Inc. and stole more than
37.5 million records on February 4, 2015. These medical records contained personally
identifiable information which was stored on their servers. Later that month, on February 24,
2015, the statistics reached to 78.8 million people. It was found out that the brands used by
Anthem Inc. for marketing its healthcare plans also suffered the data breach including the
branches like Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Amerigroup, Anthem
Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Caremore , Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and UniCare. It has
been mentioned by the Anthem that no compromise has been seen with the medical information
and financial data. In the wake of this breach, the Anthem offered towards free credit monitoring.
Around 80 million company records were estimated to be hacked as per the information given by
the The New York Times. This case has instilled the fear that the stolen data might be misused
for the identity thefts. The information that has been compromised contained the names, address,
e-mail addresses, date of birth, medical IDs, social security numbers and the employment
information along with income data.
The issue affected all the customers and employees of the Anthem Inc along with affecting the
current as well as formed policyholders. Furthermore, the various branches of the Anthem Inc,

3
DATA BREACH INCIDENTS
using its services were impacted heavily. It was estimated that around 80 million customers and
employees were affected by this attack. The identify threats was the most prominent issue as the
hackers were believed to potentially steal all the personally identifiable information from the
Anthem Inc’s server (which included, names, address, e-mail addresses, date of birth, medical
IDs, social security numbers and the employment information along with income data and
related credentials) and might use administrator’s credential for downloading these details. This
hack issue has cost Anthem approximately $230m in legal as well as consultant fees. (Massive
breach at health care company Anthem Inc., 2016)
Hacking
According to the Bloomberg News, the data breach has been performed by China. The
investigators are adamant that the breach has been performed by the hackers from China, and it
is believed that these hackers were operating undetected inside the Anthem Inc’s network form
months. The hackers gained the access by tricking an employee so as to make him click on a
phishing email which had been disguised to look like an internal text. It was observed that the
hackers were using a repeated pattern for extraction of the medial data and were altering the
query so as to avoid detection. Then the data was removed and was seen to be transferred to the
encrypted share site which resembled a drop box. This drop box share site highly resembled the
share site used by Anthem itself. And the US Office of Personnel Management's inspector
general, as per the reports from the September 2013 audit of Anthem, stated that the insurer was
found to have vulnerabilities which provided them with a "gateway for malicious virus and
hacking activity." ( Cyber security: Attack of the health hackers - FT.com., 2016).
According to the investigators, the hacks trace back to China, and they aimed at targeting the US
insurers for learning how the insurer data base and the medical coverage are set up. The blames
have been denied by the Chinese government, which is seen to be facing an affluent population
with ample of healthcare challenges. However, the medical records are highly valuable for the
intelligence purpose.
China has been facing issues with illness and various health issues in their enormous population
which further imposes suspicions towards the Chinese government. Further, the promise of the
Chinese government of providing universal access towards healthcare to all the citizen of China
by 2020 has build pressure on the government thereby, making China a clear suspect in this
issue.
Preventive measures
The organization failed to adopt the exact "cyber hygiene" or protections so as to minimize the
hack risks and to make the information so vulnerable in case of the network being infiltrated. It
has been alleged that Anthem failed to implement a two-factor authentication which eventually
failed to require all its users to change their passwords for the credentials, and the employees had
access to personal information which had data beyond their job and service areas.
Furthermore, the anthem also ignored to see all the alerts and did not implement any system or
software for monitoring the data usage or the related extractions. The company installed the two-
factor authentication after the hacking took place and only for its high-level system

4
DATA BREACH INCIDENTS
administrators. The company must have paid attention to the September 2013 audit of Anthem
and worked on all the vulnerabilities and issues. Therefore the company needed to have focused
on adopting preventive measures from the very beginning. The two factors that would have
mitigated the damage are:
1. Contact-aware access control which stops any outsider and all the phished credentials. This
controller first identified where the authentication comes from, the platform it is using and
various other details.
2. Behavioral analysis analyzes the historic activity of the user as well as others. This is how the
authorities discovered the breach, but it must be done using the automated, systematized analysis
for catching as well as raising flags or in worse case to close down the access temporarily.
( Kearns, D. , 2016)

5
DATA BREACH INCIDENTS
REFERENCES
Cyber security: Attack of the health hackers - FT.com. (2016). Financial Times. Retrieved 26 August 2016,
from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f3cbda3e-a027-11e5-8613-08e211ea5317.html?
siteedition=intl#axzz4ILKPSWe1
Kearns, D. (2016). How We Can Prevent Another Anthem Breach. Dark Reading. Retrieved 26 August
2016, from http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/how-we-can-prevent-another-anthem-
breach-/a/d-id/1319123
Lanaria, V. (2016). Verizon Enterprise Suffers Security Breach: Hackers Steal Information Of 1.5 Million
Verizon Enterprise Customers. Tech Times. Retrieved 26 August 2016, from
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/144153/20160326/verizon-enterprise-suffers-security-breach-
hackers-steal-information-of-1-5-million-verizon-enterprise-customers.htm
Loshin, P. (2016). Report: 1.5 million Verizon Enterprise customer records stolen. SearchSecurity.
Retrieved 26 August 2016, from http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/450280102/Report-15-
million-Verizon-Enterprise-customer-records-stolen
Massive breach at health care company Anthem Inc.. (2016). USA TODAY. Retrieved 26 August 2016,
from http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/02/04/health-care-anthem-hacked/22900925/