Bupa Global Data Breach 2017 News: Employee Copies Personal Details of 547,000 Customers
Bupa Global has become the target of a data breach that affected 547,000 customers whose personal information in the company's system was compromised.
In an official statement, Bupa stated that an employee "inappropriately copied and removed some customer information" from its Global division, which provides international health insurance for frequent travelers and individuals who work overseas.
The data taken include the names, dates of birth, nationalities and some contact and administrative details such as Bupa insurance membership numbers, all of which the Bupa employee "made available to other parties." The company assured that no financial or medical information was compromised.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
A spokesperson for Bupa Australia revealed that 19,595 of those 547,000 affected customers are Australians. Bupa Global, on other hand, promises to get to the bottom of the issue:
We are contacting those customers who are affected to apologise and advise them, as we believe the information has been made available to other parties.
Bupa also promises to conduct a "thorough investigation" and take legal action against the person responsible, who has already been dismissed from the company.
Due to the data breach, Bupa Global also made sure to boost its security measures to avoid such incident from ever happening again. Part of their effort is that they "increased our customer identity checks."
Protecting the information we hold about our customers is an absolute priority and I would like to assure customers that we are treating this seriously and taking steps to address the situation. This was not a cyber attack or external data breach, but a deliberate act by an employee. We have introduced additional security measures and increased our customer identity checks.
Not too long ago, Medicare customers found themselves at the end of a data breach of the same nature when personal information belonging to them were made available for sale for only $30.
