Cyber liability insurance, a new neccessity for business and personal
According to the Department of Health of the Western United States, a Utah Department of Technology Services (DTS) server data breach may have compromised 25,096 Social Security numbers, causing many people to wonder whether they might be wise to consider cyber liability insurance.
It is believed that the breach is the work of illegal hackers based in Eastern Europe.
The outcome of the attack was the retrieval of the personal information of approximately 181,604 CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Plan) and Medicaid recipients from the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) server.
The UDOH announced that it believes that the initial breach occurred on March 30. On April 4, the department released a statement that said that the claims data server breach was limited to approximately 24,000 claims. However, they revised that number to the present count on April 6.
The Utah DTS discovered that the truth of the matter, which was that the hackers were able to remove 24,000 claim files, each of which had the ability to reveal the personal and claims information from hundreds of different individuals.
State officials in Utah said that the reason that the hack was possible was because of a configuration error which was located at the authentication level within the DTS servers system’s multiple layers of security. This gave the hackers the ability to go around the security system and gain access to the files.
The UDOH also stated that it will begin contacting the affected individuals, with priority being given to the people whose Social Security numbers were included in the data that was compromised. The communication will consist of a letter that will inform them of the situation, and will provide them with instructions that they can use to take advantage of a year of free credit monitoring services.
Equally, this has convinced many people – regardless of whether or not they were impacted directly by this data breach – that cyber liability insurance may be more important than they initially suspected. Gone are the days when cyber attacks were a rare occurrence. Over the last year, breaches in massive high security corporations and government agencies have shown that no one is entirely safe when a skilled hacker is determined enough.
