You may be worth $10 million

One often overlooked asset you offer is off-site security. Hackers are everywhere and they target major medical companies. One recent case in Virginia meant $10 million.

The FBI is currently investigating an April 30 case where hackers deleted 8 million patient records and then demanded $10 million for their return. The Web site of the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program used by pharmacists to track prescription-drug abuse and theft was broken into.

The following demand was posted online:

“I have your ***! In my possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uh-oh (For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”

Virginia has shut down the website while this is being sorted out.

If you think this was a one-time situation, Express Scripts, a Virginia pharmacy prescription processor, offered a $1 million bounty last year to catch hackers who threatened to expose millions of stolen patient medical records unless paid.

Neither case has been publicly resolved.

So what does this mean to you. Show your health care clients these cases. It will prove why you can protect their information even better than major companies.

You’ll look like a bargain compared to $10 million.