Aliya Sternstein had an interesting exclusive the other day on NextGov:
The Office of Personnel Management is keeping a close eye on details emerging about a hack at the second biggest U.S. health insurer, Anthem Inc., which provides coverage to 1.3 million federal employees.
Anthem runs the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan, better known as the Federal Employee Program, or FEP, in many states, including Virginia, California and New York.
Read her full report on NextGov, while my imagination runs wild speculating as to what might happen if a federal employee in a sensitive position (such as an NSA or CIA employee) has their identity compromised by (a) a garden-variety cybercriminal looking to monetize the stolen information and (b) a state actor.
Note that “FEP” is also known as the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) Program. I don’t know enough about the program to know if CIA and NSA employees are eligible for FEHB or if they’re excluded by law, but if I had to guess, I’d guess they’d be eligible. Anyone know for sure? Use the Comments section below, please.