Recently the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services disclosed that it had suffered a data breach in which personal information of 1.3 million people was stolen by hackers.  The state of Montana is offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection insurance to those people affected by the breach, but these are of little consolation, since these services primarily act to tell you that you have become a victim of identity theft rather than help to prevent such attacks.  The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services website provides information to aid those people affected by the breach.  Here is a link to their website http://www.dphhs.mt.gov/helpline/

Increasingly healthcare providers have become a target of identity thieves because of the vast amount of personal information including Social Security numbers, credit card information and more that are compiled and held by these companies.

TIPS

Regardless of how careful we are in regard to protecting the security of our personal information, we are only as safe as the many places that hold our personal information that themselves do not take the proper security precautions.  Therefore as much as possible you should limit the places that you provide personal information.