InterSystems and Premera Blue Cross Bring Together Claims and Clinical Data to “Make Healthcare Work Better”

Health insurer leverages clinical data assets to improve care quality and manage commercial risk

InterSystems Corporation, a global leader in health information technology, today announced a groundbreaking collaboration with Premera Blue Cross, a not-for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee in Alaska and a Blue Cross licensee in Washington State. Premera is using InterSystems HealthShare^® to bring together clinical data from health information exchanges, provider group electronic medical records (EMRs), along with claims to build a complete picture of each of its members. By doing so, Premera can more effectively manage risk and utilize data to support its purpose of “improving customers’ lives by making healthcare work better.”

“By combining claims and clinical data, we enable providers to better understand a patient’s health issues in real time,” says Colt Courtright, Director of Corporate Data and Analytics at Premera. “For example, a doctor knows what prescriptions have been written, but not if they have been filled.
Combining clinical and claims data in real time fills that gap and gives doctors a much more complete picture of their patients’ health, empowering a richer care experience.”

Premera and InterSystems began their initial partnership in 2017, when they used HealthShare to connect to the Alaska health information exchange, healtheconnect Alaska, to bring in 150,000 patient records from across the state. After rapidly achieving a series of milestones through HealthShare’s real-time data access, Premera expanded the services to add its Washington-based customers, and then later to 11 other states. To date, Premera receives Inpatient and Emergency Department (ED) alerts from contracted data sources across these 11 U.S. states from more than 400 EMRs driving efficient and holistic care to its customers.

“We are only scratching the surface when it comes to utilizing Big Data to its full potential in healthcare. We are working with InterSystems as part of Premera’s strategy to leverage data in a meaningful way that provide direct benefits for our customers,” Courtright said. “Since implementing HealthShare, Premera has the potential to better evaluate health risk, and support patients with higher-level care needs.”

“We submit claims every year to CMS that demonstrate the risk we’ve taken on based on our customer population,” said Courtright. “Increased insight into a customer’s complete health picture, and the ability to manage risk in real-time, we believe will prove to be invaluable to our organization.”

“Disconnects between providers and patients have been, and will continue to be, a huge pain point in our healthcare system,” said Don Woodlock, vice president of HealthShare at InterSystems. “Bringing together clinical and claims data provides Premera greater insight into their customers and allows them to innovate in new and exciting ways. This allows them to be better partners and collaborators with their network of providers which leads to better outcomes for everyone.”

https://www.intersystems.com/news-events/news/news-item/intersystems-and-premera-blue-cross-bring-together-claims-and-clinical-data-to-make-healthcare-work-better/

Europol and partners dismantle prolific cyber-extortion gang

Tomáš Foltýn

The arrest of a 25-year-old French man in Thailand apparently seals the fate of Rex Mundi, a hack-and-extort collective that operated since at least 2012

Europol has announced the arrests over the past year of eight French nationals who are suspected of being involved in a long-running hacking ring called Rex Mundi.

The latest in a string of arrests was made by Thai police, which acted on a French international arrest warrant and apprehended “a French national with coding skills” on May 18 of this year. This operation capped a year-long effort that also resulted in the arrests of another seven people believed to be the gang’s members, who were nabbed by French police in June and October 2017.

Rex Mundi (Latin for “King of the World”) made a name for itself with multiple hack-and-extort campaigns that mainly victimized companies in Europe. As we also reported in 2014, the gang typically hacked into corporate networks and ransacked them for sensitive information before demanding ransom payments on pain of dumping the data online. On a number of occasions, the group delivered on its threats.

As per Bleeping Computer, the earliest reports of the crew’s activities date back to the summer of 2012. The gang would initially take to Twitter to brag about its shenanigans, only to opt for a more low-key profile later on.

How the crew’s undoing unfolded

Law enforcement began to turn the tables on the gang in May 2017, shortly after the group claimed credit for stealing troves of customer data from an unnamed UK-based firm. A member of the gang then phoned the company and demanded either €580,000 for not going public with the data or over €825,000 (both in bitcoin) for also sharing details about how the intrusion had been carried out. For each day the company failed to pay, the criminals demanded a ransom of €210,000, according to Europol.

The company refused to pay up and contacted the UK Metropolitan Police, which gathered and then relayed information about the attack to French police and Europol. “Within an hour, Europol’s 24/7 Operational Centre was able to link the available information to a French national,” said the European Union’s law enforcement agency.

French police then moved to nab a total of five suspected members of the group in June 2017 and another two in October. The primary suspect admitted to his role in the latest extortion campaign, but said that the breach itself had been perpetrated by a hacker whom he had hired on the dark web.

https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/06/19/europol-dismantle-cyber-extortion-gang/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eset%2Fblog+%28ESET+Blog%3A+We+Live+Security%29

Malware WannaCryptor geblokkeerd door de module Network Attack Protection van ESET

ESET heeft zijn professionele klanten beschermd tegen één van de belangrijkste uitbraken van malware die de jongste jaren plaats had: de epidemie van WannaCryptor malware in mei 2017. De malware besmette duizenden bedrijven wereldwijd et veroorzaakte schade die op miljoenen of zelfs miljarden dollars geraamd wordt. Dankzij zijn Network Attack Protection technologie werden de door ESET beschermde toegangspunten niet aangetast.

De aanval van 12 mei 2017 was een van de meest verstorende uit de geschiedenis van de cybersecurity. In enkele minuten, werden meer dan 200.000 toegangspunten van duizenden bedrijven in meer dan 150 landen versleuteld en ontoegankelijk gemaakt door de WannaCryptor malware, ook nog WannaCry en WCrypt genoemd. De bedrijfsprocessen werden lam gelegd in tal van sectoren, waardoor de schade op ettelijke miljoenen of zelfs miljarden dollars werd geschat.

De aanvallers achter dit incident hebben geprofiteerd van EternalBlue, een gesofisticeerde besturingsmodule, die zou gestolen of “gelekt“ zijn uit de US National Security Agency (NSA) om vervolgens online gepost te worden door een groep “black hats” (kwaadwillige hackers) gekend onder de naam Shadow Brokers.

Dit besturingsmodule maakte gebruik van een specifieke kwetsbaarheid (CVE-2017-0144) bij de implementatie door Microsoft van de Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, via poort 445. Door internet te scannen om poorten 445 te vinden, kon de malwareworm zijn code uitvoeren op de blootgestelde kwetsbare systemen en zich verspreiden zowel in de kern van het lokale netwerk van het slachtoffer als op het Internet.

Het merendeel van de besmette systemen gebruikte een niet bijgewerkte versie van Windows 7. Maar zelfs de systemen die de correctiepatches, door Microsoft op 14 maart vrijgegeven - dus twee maanden voor de aanval, niet hadden geïmplementeerd, konden beschermd worden door een kwaliteitsvolle beveiligingsoplossing in meerdere lagen.

Door gebruik te maken van de netwerkdetectie die op 25 april 2017 eraan werd toegevoegd, was de Network Attack Protection laag van ESET in staat om de aanvallen door besturingsmodules van EternalBlue te blokkeren die erop uit waren om kwaadaardig content in de doelsystemen in te brengen. Het ging om de familie van WannaCryptor malware en ander kwaadaardig content dat dezelfde verspreidingsmechanisme kon gebruiken.

De Network Attack Protection technologie van ESET liet de gebruikers toe om hun gewone activiteiten ongestoord verder te zetten. Wereldwijd hebben de besmette bedrijven en organisaties nog dagen na de aanval laten weten dat ze nog steeds belangrijke problemen hadden in de kern van hun systemen.

Het aanzienlijke aantal besmette toestellen in het WannaCryptor verhaal laat zien welke cruciale rol de implementatie van patches speelt bij de beveiliging van een organisatie.

Een dergelijke werkwijze kan echter tijdrovend en duur zijn. Door de beveiligingsoplossingen in meerdere lagen van ESET te installeren, verbeteren de bedrijven en organisaties hun bescherming tot de cruciale updates volledig getest en vervolgens geïmplementeerd worden.

Deze technologieën kunnen eveneens bijdragen tot het beschermen van access points waarvoor geen patches bestaan alsook enkele systemen die in het netwerk over het hoofd worden gezien als de patches over het hele bedrijf uitgerold worden.

Meer op www.eset.com

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