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In this week's issue: a massive healthcare data breach could affect as many as 80 million Americans, the same hackers that attacked Target breach another parking service provider, Target announces its new CIO to lead the company, the recent Sony hack will cost the company over $35 million in IT costs alone and the Rippleshot team takes a look at the current lawsuits against Target following their 2013 data breach.

Massive Data Breach At Health Insurer Anthem Reveals SSNs and More, Affecting Nearly 80M

The second largest health insurer in the United States, Anthem Inc., announced that a group of hackers initiated an attack on the company’s servers stealing the personal information of as many as 80 million customers. Anthem revealed that names, birthdays, Social Security numbers, street addresses and email addresses might have been compromised. This data breach has the potential to be the largest health care data breach in history.

As more information becomes available, be sure to check our Twitter account for the latest data breach updates.

Target, Home Depot Hackers Hit Book2Park.Com With Data Breach

Yet another parking service appears to have fallen victim to a data breach, compromising the payment information of an unknown number of customers. According to Brian Krebs, Book2Park.com, an online parking reservation website is the third service of its kind to suffer from a data breach. The same cybercriminal group that stole more than 100 million credit and debit cards during the Target and Home Depot data breaches, appear to be behind this attack as well.

Back in December of 2014, Atlanta-based parking service, Park ‘N Fly also suffered a data breach. Rippleshot Chief Scientist Randal Cox also weighed in on this growing trend of potential breaches at parking lot operations.

Target Names New CIO To Lead Company

Since its catastrophic data breach in 2013, exposing the payment information of over 40 million payment cards, Target will be introducing its third IT leader in less than two years. Mike McNamara, the former CIO of Tesco PLC, will now serve as Target’s executive vice president and CIO. McNamara will replace Bob DeRodes, who joined the retailer in May of 2014 and will report to Target’s Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell regarding Target’s tech and information security teams.

At last count, there are currently 140 lawsuits filled against Target, including lawsuits from consumers, financial institutions and the retailer's shareholders.

Sony Hack To Cost Company $35 million in IT Costs

Following the cyber attack at Sony Pictures surrounding the theatrical release of The Interview, Sony Pictures estimates that the damage caused to the company’s IT resources will cost $35 million. Sony originally reported that the attack would cost the company $15 million “in investigation and remediation costs,” but those costs went up after analyzing the scope of the damage.

Currently, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation still holds North Korea responsible for the attack. However, a U.S. security firm claims that it has evidence that Russian hackers were behind the theft of data at Sony Pictures.

Be sure to check back for more updates on our Sony data breach timeline blog post.

Rippleshot Content: Two-Thirds of Americans Don't Trust Retailers with Their Sensitive Payment Information

Bizrate has recently released the findings of their second Payment Security Study, and the results for retailers are grim. While it's been several months since a massive data breach the likes of Target or Home Depot, the residual impact of these incidents on consumer spending habits is holding strong. In the latest Rippleshot blog post, we take a look at the findings from Bizrate's latest study to better understand the insights of U.S. cardholders.

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