[Lee Skallerup Bessette is a Faculty Instructional Consultant at the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CELT) at the University of Kentucky. She primarily works with faculty on digital pedagogy and digital humanities. She blogs at College Ready Writing and you can find her tweeting prolifically at @readywriting.
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[Lee Skallerup Bessette is a Faculty Instructional Consultant at the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CELT) at the University of Kentucky. She primarily works with faculty on digital pedagogy and digital humanities. She blogs at College Ready Writing and you can find her tweeting prolifically at @readywriting.–@JBJ]
You might be one of the 80 million people impacted by the cyber-security breach at health insurance provider Anthem yesterday; I am. [Me, too! – JBJ] While my medical records are safe, the hackers possible have all of my other relevant information needed to steal my identity, not to mention the identity of my children (which is often easier to do because who monitors their kids’ credit ratings?).
It’s not particularly comforting that Anthem is going to notify those particular individuals whose identities were stolen, and thus vulnerable, as soon as they know for sure, as my identity may have already been used to buy a plane or at least sign up for utilities. 24–48 hours (let alone the weeks Anthem is saying it will take them) is an awfully long time for professional data thieves to disseminate the ill-gotten goods and start racking up debt in my name.
(I already have enough, thank you very much. If you want to take my identity and say, pay off my student loans [Again, mine, too!–JBJ], or set up college funds for my kids, that would be nice. Highly unlikely, but nice.)
The security of our personal data is becoming more and more of a concern; last year, Target was hacked, as were a number of universities. We can be vigilant–the Federal Trade Commission offers this advice on “securing” your data and information, but the majority of their advice comes in the form of what to doafteryour identity has been stolen. Other than paying a monthly fee to a service like LifeLock (which my family had just canceled because, why did we really even need it?), there doesn’t seem to be much we can do, because so many different entities have our data in their systems.
Anthem has said they will pay for those impacted to have their credit monitored, but doesn’t say anything about offering support and services for those whose credit is impacted through fraud; between phones calls and letters and other efforts to clear our the debts and regain their credit scores, will there be any compensation for that time and stress for individuals who find themselves in that situation? Probably not.
What do you do to help secure your data and identity? Perhaps more importantly, what are your institutions doing?
