"France: 33 Million Social Security Numbers Exposed in Health Insurance Hack"
The personal information of 33 million French citizens could be exposed after two French health insurance operators suffered a data breach recently. Viamedis, France’s leading provider of medical third-party payment, confirmed on February 1 that it had suffered a data breach. Medical third-party payment is a French system in which a health insurance provider advances the patient fee for a medical service on behalf of the national social security services. Viamedis is the payment operator for a number of such health insurance providers. It was later reported that threat actors gained access to Viamedis’ IT systems on January 29. On February 5, another third-party payment operator, Almerys, said it had also experienced a similar incident. The patients’ personal information, including names, birth dates, and social security numbers, could be exposed. Details of the victims’ contract with their health insurance could also have been compromised. The French data privacy watchdog, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), said that the breach had not affected financial and medical data or postal and email addresses.