On October 10th, Joyce Musante, Privacy Office Lead for CIGNA, notified the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that a disk sent to a governmental agency by a certified courier on June 20th had been lost. The unnamed courier notified CIGNA on September 9th that the package had been damaged and the contents were missing. Despite an investigation, the disk has not been located.
The disk contained medical claims data on an unspecified number of CIGNA members or their dependents, including their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and medical information.
Although CIGNA has offered those affected two years’ of credit monitoring and identity theft protection, the breach raises a few questions:
1. If the package was shipped on June 20th, what follow-up procedures does CIGNA use to ensure that packages are received in a timely fashion? How is it that no one from CIGNA noticed for over 2 months that there was no receipt for the package?
2. If CIGNA notified the government agency that it was shipping the package on June 20th, how is it that no one on the receiving end noticed that it hadn’t arrived?
3. Why is the company still using Social Security numbers?