Blue Shield and the Blue Cross of Florida stated that personal information of a few insurance candidates has been revealed via online means. In last August, the Florida Blue was warned for the patient’s data exposure so it launched the investigation right away. According to the investigation report of Florida Blue, the information of 475 candidates was shifted to clouds by an illegal insurance agent RTHQ (Real Time Health Quotes).
The stolen data includes the files related to the agency, copies of life insurance, dental and health applications ranging 2009-2014. All those files were stored in the cloud without any security constraints. Because of this reason, these files were also accessed by the general public using online means.
Although the personal information was accessed and stolen, but the analysis reports show that the exposed data has not been used for any suspicious activity. The data files contain the information like the date of birth, the applicant’s names, medical histories, demographic information, payment information and limited banking information. Following the results of the analysis that the data has not been used for any suspicious activity, RTHQ made sure that the data is no longer available for the unauthorized people.
Florida Blue found the incident on 30th August in 2017 and all the affected candidates were notified for the breach of information in late October. Although, the Florida Blue was not really responsible for the information breach, still the affected candidates has been offered security theft services without any fee. Florida stated the investigation process is still working and trying to find out how RTHQ got the information of the application and why the information was saved on the unsecured server.
The analysis report was submitted to Department of Health and Human Service’s Office shows that 939 people got affected by the information breach.