New Anthem breach underscores the need to manage cyber risk throughout the enterprise ecosystem

Anthem – yes, that Anthem – has been hacked again. About a month after the beleaguered health insurer agreed to fork over a record-setting $115 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to its massive 2015 breach, it was breached again, or rather, one of its third-party vendors was. The 2017 Anthem breach involves approximately 18,000 Medicare members whose personal information was stolen by a malicious insider employed by LaunchPoint Ventures, a Medicare insurance coordination services firm. Healthcare IT News reports:

LaunchPoint discovered on April 12 that an employee was likely stealing and misusing Anthem and non-Anthem data. The employee emailed a file containing information about Anthem’s members to his personal address on July 8, 2016.

The file contained Medicare ID numbers, including Social Security numbers, Health Plan ID numbers, names and dates of enrollment. Officials said limited last names and dates of birth were included.

Takeaways from the Latest Anthem Breach

The Anthem breach is the latest to underscore the need for organizations to manage cyber risk throughout their entire enterprise ecosystem. Anthem’s own systems weren’t hacked; their third-party vendor was. Other recent victims of third-party breaches include Netflix, the Republican National Committee, Trump Hotels, Verizon, and Google (which was impacted by a breach at third-party vendor of one of their third-party vendors).

As organizations outsource more and more IT services, from payroll to billing to web development, hackers are increasingly targeting these service providers. It is estimated that 63% of all enterprise breaches can be traced back to a third-party vendor. Hackers may choose to attack these service providers because many of them are smaller firms whose cyber security may not be as robust as that of the national or multinational corporation whose data they really want.

Know Your Vendors

The danger of third-party data breaches is one of the reasons why the U.S. Department of Defense is requiring not only its primary contractors, but any firm they subcontract DoD work to, to be compliant with the DFARS security standard by the end of 2017.

Private-sector organizations should take a cue from the DoD and only do business with IT service providers who have released AICPA SOC / SSAE16 reports and/or who have important IT security certifications such as NIST, ISO, or FedRAMP. These organizations have proven their commitment to the highest levels of data security by undergoing rigorous security audits that require them to adhere to certain procedures and controls and put them in writing.

Likewise, IT service providers should obtain the appropriate data security certifications and demonstrate to their customers that they have strong security controls in place. Continuum GRC’s IT Audit Machine (ITAM) empowers organizations to get and maintain compliance the easy way, with self-help modules covering numerous compliance standards, including FedRAMP, SSAE 16, COBIT, ISO 27001, ISO 27002, ISO 27005, SOX, FFIEC, PCI, GLBA, HIPAA, CMS, NERC CIP, DFARS, and other federal and state mandates.

Don’t Expect to Pass the Buck

Just because a breach is your vendor’s fault doesn’t mean your organization will be shielded from liability. The $300 million Target breach, which resulted in both the CEO and the CISO losing their jobs, involved a third-party point-of-sale vendor.

The scope of potential liability just broadened; shortly after news of the Anthem breach broke, a U.S. Court of Appeals issued a ruling against health insurer CareFirst, allowing a class-action lawsuit filed by customers impacted by a 2014 breach to move forward. The ruling is expected to have wide implications, allowing customers not only of health insurers but any company to sue if their personal information is stolen.

Ensuring good governance, risk management, compliance, and cyber security throughout your enterprise ecosystem takes far less time and costs far less money than doing damage control after a breach happens.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cyber security regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.

RegTech Simplifies Governance, Risk, and Compliance

As compliance costs skyrocket, standards grow increasingly complex, and the cyber threat environment evolves, organizations are turning to RegTech solutions to automate their compliance processes and improve their overall cybersecurity posture.

Compliance with regulatory and industry standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and SSAE 16 SOC reporting, are a burdensome yet necessary part of doing business in the digital world. Organizations operating in highly regulated industries, such as healthcare and finance, face significant compliance challenges, especially when they must comply with multiple standards. HIPAA, for example, applies to any organization that handles medical records, including schools, collection agencies that handle medical debt, personal injury attorneys, and SaaS providers of healthcare software; meanwhile, these same organizations may also have to comply with PCI DSS, SSAE 16 reporting, SOX, and other applicable standards.

Organizations must figure out which standards apply to them, then continually keep up with reporting requirements, audits, and the inevitable changes in those standards as technology and the cyber threat environment evolve. It is estimated that regulatory compliance costs U.S. businesses about $2 trillion annually, and in a perverse twist, small business’s compliance costs are over three times higher than what large companies bear. This heavy burden helps explain why so many enterprise cyber security “plans” start and end with compliance, even though compliance does not equate to data security. It’s not necessarily that organizations don’t care about whether their data is secure, but that they spend so much money and time on compliance, there’s nothing left to tackle cyber security.

Fortunately, technology has made it possible for organizations to achieve compliance and secure their systems and data, at an affordable cost.

RegTech to the Rescue

One of the biggest problems in many organizations is the fact that their compliance processes – or the processes of their third-party compliance providers – are not automated. Some companies still use spreadsheet programs such as Excel for compliance reporting and audits, even though Excel was never meant to be used with the very large data sets produced by today’s complex data environments. But RegTech software, such as Continuum GRC’s IT Audit Machine (ITAM), can.

While the term “RegTech” is most commonly associated with the finance industry, RegTech solutions can be employed by any organization that must adhere to compliance standards, including healthcare, cloud computing, SaaS, education, and public-sector organizations. RegTech solutions utilize big data capabilities and rapid report creation to automate data management and reporting. Instead of multiple, disparate spreadsheets and ledgers, RegTech software creates a centralized repository of all IT compliance requirements with associated controls and automated information flows for audits, assessments, and testing.

Making Sense of Big Data

The big problem with big data is that it amounts to a lot of big noise unless you have the capability to analyze it and derive actionable insight from it. RegTech doesn’t just simplify your compliance processes; it also strengthens your enterprise’s cyber security by providing the advanced data analysis capabilities you need to make sense of your data environment and discover where your vulnerabilities lie. The ITAM, for example, integrates IT governance, policy management, risk management, and incident management. In addition to taking the pain out of the compliance process, it empowers you to document and analyze IT risks, develop mitigation plans, define security controls, and manage ongoing risk assessments so that you can anticipate new and emerging threats and stop them before a breach occurs.

RegTech is poised to transform IT governance, compliance, and cyber security. Organizations that employ this new technology will free up money, time, and human resources to innovate, create, and pursue long-term organizational goals instead of being bogged down in regulatory paperwork and worried about data breaches and other cyber attacks.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization successfully simplify Governance, Risk, and Compliance, and secure your systems.

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