Foreign Hackers and your health care data
According to a DHS Analyst, foreign hackers are after your health care records.
Mark Walker, who works in DHS’ Critical Infrastructure Protection Division, told a workshop audience at the National Institute of Standards and Technology that the hackers’ primary motive seems to be espionage.
“They’ve been focused on the [Department of Defense] – the military – but now are spreading out into the health care private sector,” Walker said.
Bruce Schneier thinks it has to be a joke.
I’m not so sure. The expenses related to clearing a company’s good name, after privacy breaches and violations of HIPAA have degraded public trust, would be huge. It could be true economic warfare, 21st century style. All the more reason to create and follow strong security policies, perform risk analysis and mitigation, and put technologies in place such as identity management and strong encryption.
Or, you can instead believe it’s just a joke.
2 thoughts on “Foreign Hackers and your health care data”
This information could also be used for ID theft which is a 50 billion dollar per year industry.
Also consider blackmail, what if you have some disease that is stigmatized like AIDS? Imagine how that could effect both regular and people in power. Imagine a pro-life politician who has had an abortion for example.
Finally, consider that many medical records now contain DNA information, genetic dispositions, etc.
That aside, I suppose that SSNs, phone numbers, addresses, doctor information, and the rest are jokes.
There are some retractions and corrections provided by DHS in this blog entry
Most of it agrees with the comments and content above. As is often the case, the story was a bit sensationalized.
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