Insurance Giant Anthem Pays Record $16Mln For Violations Tied To Data Hack - US Government

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th October, 2018) Anthem Insurance Corporation has agreed to pay the Federal government a record $16 million over potential privacy violations in a 2014-15 data breach that exposed information on 79 million people, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a news release.

"Anthem has agreed to pay $16 million to the [HHS] Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and take substantial corrective action to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules," the release said on Monday.

The $16 million settlement eclipses the previous high of $5.

55 million paid to OCR in 2016, the release noted.

"OCR's investigation revealed that between December 2, 2014 and January 27, 2015, the cyber-attackers stole the ePHI of almost 79 million individuals, including Names, social security numbers, medical identification numbers, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, and employment information," the release said.

OCR's investigation also revealed that Anthem failed to conduct an enterprise-wide risk analysis, had insufficient procedures to regularly review information system activities and failed to identify and respond to suspected or known security incidents, the release added.