One of the providers of insurance ID cards for carriers such as BlueCross BlueShield, Newkirk Products, has been the victim of a data breach. While no health plan systems were affected, the personal data of 3.3 million insurance plan members may have been exposed.
Newkirk discovered that one of their servers had been accessed without proper authorization at the beginning of July. Once aware of the intrusion, Newkirk shut down the server down. A forensic investigator determined the initial breach happened on May 21. Since then, Federal law enforcement has been called in to investigate.
While the sever didn’t contain medical data, banking information, or social security numbers, depending on a customer’s insurance plan, their dependent’s names, dates of birth, addresses, Medical ID numbers among other pieces of personal data may have been compromised. Newkirk has mailed letters to those affected to notify them of the breach and to offer two years of free identity protection.