Staff from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) detected suspicious activity in the Direct Enrollment Pathway last week and determined it was a breach a few days after. How the portal was compromised and the specific data that was accessed has not yet been released, but it is known that files of 75,000 individuals were exposed. When it was first launched in 2013, the Direct Enrollment Pathway allowed for insurance agents to aid consumers in signing up for Obamacare through the national healthcare exchanges formally known as the FFE. The broker accounts associated with the anomalous activity were taken down after the breach was discovered. Seema Verma, a CMS Administrator said “I want to make clear to the public that HealthCare.gov and the Marketplace Call Center are still available, and open enrollment will not be negatively impacted. We are working to identify the individuals potentially impacted as quickly as possible so that we can notify them and provide resources such as credit protection.” Updates on the breach should be publicly available within the coming weeks.
