Howard Mills, director and chief adviser of the Insurance Industry Group of Deloitte LLP, recently penned an article in Insurance Networking News calling for insurance companies to adopt cyber standards.
Mills believes that insurance should be at the head of cyber standards due to the sheer volume of personal information including names, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, dates of birth, favorite colors, and so on, that they keep on file. Some insurance companies might have information on diagnoses and treatments, prognoses and patient concerns, all of which is sought after information.
Mills argues that “if a consumer is not convinced that an insurer can keep this information confidential, how likely is that consumer to purchase that insurer’s product?” Consumer advocates are calling for increased accountability from insurers who usually operate fairly opaquely according to Birny Birnbaum, a consumer advocate.