Hackmageddon
Rachael Hansen
Introduction to Computer Applications and Systems/BIS/221
March 2nd 2015
Professor Paul Schwartz
Hackmageddon
Anthem is one of the largest health insurance companies in the United States and unfortunately was the victim of a recent cyber attack. Highly sophisticated hackers had accessed millions of employee’s and customer’s personal information. According to the New York Times, “The information accessed included names, Social Security numbers, birthdays, addresses, email and employment information, including income data” (para. 2). However, it is believed that credit card information, medical claims and test results were not leaked. Evidently there has been an increase in attacks on healthcare companies, which makes trusting them weary for some. Anthem was not required to report the attack for several weeks, yet chose to alert authorities immediately and were praised for doing so.
According to the New York Times, this “could be the largest breach of a health care company to date, and one of the largest ever of customer information” (para. 4). Over roughly 80 million were left vulnerable due to this security breach. These attacks have become quite the frightening occurrence since other companies have fell victim such as Target, JPMorgan Chase, Staples and Sony Entertainment. The most relevant question would be, are these companies taking the highest measures to ensure security or are these areas they have cut costs on? Customer trust should be priority one when it comes to corporate ethics.
Large corporations these days collect a wide variety of user information that they utilize for a vast number of purposes. However, some of this information they collect is incredibly sensitive. From an ethical standpoint, it is essential that companies like Anthem make it top priority to protect sensitive content. It has been shown over time that cyber attacks are going to be continually occurring as...