It's only been five days but by now you've already heard about it, Anthem got hacked. Anthem is the second largest insurer in the United States and is the company behind Blue Cross Blue Shield. Personal information of 80 million of its customers and employees was compromised by a sophisticated attack by hackers. Today I checked the US Census Bureau and it reports there are 320 million residents in the US. In other words, 25% of the country got hacked last week. Think about that: one in four Americans had their identity stolen by a single attack. Names, birthdays, addresses and Social Security numbers- all taken in one fell swoop.
These 80 million records were stolen in part because the database they reside on was not encrypted. In other words, once hackers had access to the database, its contents were in cleartext, in human readable form. Sadly, the Anthem hack only reinforces what we see in the marketplace today.
Welcome to the new reality of living in America: if you aren't encrypting your data, it's being read, stolen, copied or intercepted by someone else. Target. Neiman Marcus. Sony. Now Anthem. Don't you think it's time to start encrypting all of your email?