Dive Brief:

• Health insurer Excellus BlueCross BlueShield reported that hackers recently gained access to the records of more than 10 million people.
• The records include personal, financial and medical information.
• The breach also affected members of other Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in upstate New York.
   

Dive Insight:

Excellus said an initial attack occurred in 2013, but the company did not find out about it until August of this year. Since then, the company has been working with the FBI and cybersecurity firms to investigate the break-in.

The attackers reportedly gained administrative privileges to Excellus' IT systems. Thus far, there is no evidence that the data has been misused, CIO reports.

Excellus said it will send breach notification letters via mail to all affected persons, and is offering free credit monitoring and identity protection services through a partner.

The incident comes on the heels of large data breaches at Anthem, Premera and CareFirst.