Insurance Blog

Data breaches across a range of industries continue to compromise companies’ cyber defense systems and data and the personal information of their customers. This week’s headline news that more than 75,000 computer systems at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies around the world have been hacked over the last 18 months is a reminder of this growing exposure. Perhaps even more concerning, in a February 18 Wall Street Journal article security firm NetWitness says that the hacking operation is still running and it isn’t yet clear to what extent it has been contained. The attack comes just a month after reports that the computer networks at Google and around 30 other U.S. corporations had been compromised. Latest reports suggest those attacks have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China. Javelin Research & Strategy’s recently released 2010 Identity Fraud Survey Report noted that personal identification most likely to […]

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Our fellow bloggers at Workers Comp Insider tipped us off that this week is Protect Your Identity Week, so it seems fitting to end it with a post on ID theft. This is a timely reminder that fast approaching is the November 1 deadline by which financial institutions and creditors have to comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) so-called “red flags rule” which requires them to develop and implement written identity theft programs. Regular readers will remember that the FTC has delayed enforcement of the new rule a number of times. Now an October 21 online article at Lawyers USA by Kimberly Atkins reports that earlier this week the House passed H.R. 3763, a bill that would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to exempt certain businesses from the red flag guidelines. Under the bill, healthcare, accounting and legal practices that employ fewer than 20 people would automatically be […]

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The indictments of three individuals allegedly responsible for five corporate data breaches including the single largest data breach in history is a reminder of the risk businesses face from this threat. Yesterday’s indictment by the Department of Justice describes a scheme in which more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers together with account information were stolen from payment processor Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven Inc and supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers Co. For more on this story, check out today’s New York Times article by Brad Stone. ID theft remains the number one consumer complaint received by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), accounting for 32 percent of all fraud complaints in 2007. Some 258,427 identity theft complaints were reported to the FTC in 2007, up 5 percent on the previous year. Check out I.I.I. info on ID theft.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has given financial institutions and creditors a further temporary reprieve – until November 1, 2009 – to comply with the so-called “red flags rule” which requires them to develop and implement written identity theft programs. This is the third time the FTC has delayed enforcement of the new rules which were originally slated to take effect in 2008. The FTC said it will provide additional resources and guidance to clarify whether businesses are covered by the rule and what they must do to comply. The FTC’s Web site, www.ftc.gov/redflagsrule, offers resources to help businesses determine if they are covered and, if they are, how to comply. The red flags rule requires financial institutions and creditors with covered accounts to implement prevention programs to identify, detect and respond to patterns, practices or specific activities that could indicate ID theft. A July 29 online article at Lawyers USA by Kimberly […]

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Increasing use of electronic records in the health care system means a growing number of people are falling victim to medical identity theft. A June 12 article in the New York Times by Walecia Konrad focuses on this emerging risk. It estimates that in 2007 more than 250,000 Americans a year were victims of medical identity theft, a number that is increasing.  A World Privacy Forum report published in 2006 found that despite the profound risk it carries medical identity theft remains the least studied and most poorly documented of all identity theft crimes. The report estimated that there could be as many as a quarter to half a million people who have been victims of this crime. Medical ID theft occurs when someone uses a person’s name or other parts of their identity such as insurance information, without the person’s knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods […]

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