Cyberguy Kurt Knutson appeared on “Fox & Friends” to discuss what Americans should be concerned about regarding data breaches and Apple's bold new move towards AI.
About one million Medicare recipients have been warned that their personal information may have been exposed in a cybersecurity incident last year.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Wisconsin Physician Services Insurance Company (WPS), a contractor that used the affected MOVEit software, announced last week that they had notified 946,801 Medicare enrollees that their “protected health information or other personally identifiable information” may have been exposed.
According to CMS, names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, mailing addresses, Medicare beneficiary identifiers and certain other personal information may have been exposed.
Names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, mailing addresses, Medicare beneficiary identifiers, and certain other personal information may have been exposed. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The federal agency said files containing personal information were “compromised” between May 27 and 31 of last year in a cybersecurity incident linked to the MOVEit file transfer system, developed by Progress Software Inc, which was used by WPS.
During a separate investigation this summer related to the 2023 incident, WPS learned that a malicious actor “copied files from WPS' MOVEit file transfer system,” according to CMS.
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“While CMS and WPS are not aware of any misappropriations of personal information or reports of misuse of personal information as a direct result of this incident, we are taking this opportunity to notify you so that you can take advantage of the information and resources provided in this notice if you wish,” they said in a sample letter.
In a letter, CMS said beneficiaries' Medicare coverage “was not affected by this incident,” but it has still provided them with new Medicare numbers and cards.
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Those potentially affected will be given free access to Experian's credit monitoring service for 12 months as part of CMS's incident response.
“We take the privacy and security of your Medicare information very seriously,” the CMS letter said. “CMS and WPS apologize for any inconvenience caused by this incident.”
MOVEit software developers have resolved this issue with a software patch.
The federal agency said the files containing personal information were “leaked” between May 27 and 31 last year. (/iStock)
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A total of 67.4 million people are covered by some form of Medicare.
