Florida officials disclosed a possible breach of medical files that contained personal identifiable information (PII). The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration stated in a press release that an employee “was the victim to a malicious phishing email” on November 15, 2017.
This breach has the potential of exposing up to 30,000 records. Initial findings from an inspector general investigation found the following PII may have been stolen:
- Medicaid ID
- Birthdates
- Addresses
- Diagnoses
- Medical Conditions
- Social Security Numbers
Recommendations:
Notify one of the three reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian or Trans Union. A fraud alert on your credit will be issued, in the case someone tries to have credit issued under your SSN, it will make the process more stringent in terms of verifying your personal Identifiable Information.
Setting up credit monitoring or identity theft protection to handle a SSN theft. Both solutions alert you about suspicious activity a lot faster than if you were to monitor transactions yourself.
Finally, companies and organizations ought to continually provide training their employees on secure email usage and web-browsing.
