Government audits continue to reveal that millions of
people's personally identifiable information is at risk.
Continuous audit reports by the Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) of The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reveal
that online health care insurance exchanges could be the next juicy
target for hackers looking for consumers' personal information.
To date, the OIG has identified security vulnerabilities in the
federal exchange, and in the state exchanges in California, Kentucky, and New Mexico. While all the audited entities
have begun the necessary bulwarking of their exchanges, there is
room for improvement.
The health care exchanges are online marketplaces for subsidized
insurance set up as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA
gives each of the states the option to utilize the federal exchange
or build their own. Although there is a unique interface to each of
the exchanges in the 12 states that have built their own, they all
allow
