Dive Brief:
- Officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced this past week that one or more hackers breached Healthcare.gov in July. Malware was uploaded onto the site, but no personal information was stolen from the site that services more than 5 million people.
- Security on the site has been upgraded and officials have said that hackers were only able to access a server that tests code on the site. The breach will not affect upcoming enrollment in November.
- The site has been plagued from its inception, part of the reason that the White House looked to tech giant Google for its new chief technology officer, Megan Smith. Bad coding and lack of leadership have been named as causes for the site's problems thus far and may be why hackers were able to enter this summer.
Dive Insight:
Consumers are generally becoming wary of the security of their healthcare information with breaches like the recent one at Community Health Systems that compromised the information of 4.5 million patients. The White House is looking to clean up its IT department with the recent naming of forward-looking Megan Smith, who worked on the Google[x] project, a research and development program for long-term technology projects.Maybe even more important to security was the appointment of Alex Macgillivray as her deputy. Macgillivray is a former general counsel at Twitter and will focus on "internet policy, intellectual property policy, and the intersection of big data, technology and privacy," according to the White House. Read: Data security.
Want to read more? You may enjoy this story on 4 ways providers can avoid data breaches.