Data Disaster: 33 Million French Citizens at Risk in Massive Leak

A massive security breach at two third-party healthcare payment servicers has exposed the information of nearly half of all French citizens by way of a major breach of personal information, the French data privacy watchdog revealed last week. As the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) warned in late January, the two leading payment processing outfits, Viamedis and Almerys, both suffered breaches of their systems, resulting in the theft of data belonging to more than 33 million customers from their systems. 

The information that has been compromised includes information such as the date of birth, marital status, social security number, and information about insurance coverage of customers and their families. According to the CNIL, the company did not compromise any banking information, medical records, or contact information. 

As a result of the sophisticated phishing attack that compromised the Almeras and Viamedis third-party payment portals late last month, both payment portals were affected as well. There was no further information provided on the causes of Almery’s loss, but there is a high probability that it was a similar incident. 

As Viamedis reported, the attacks occurred within a matter of five days around the beginning of February. Hackers obtained login credentials for health professionals via phishing attacks and gained unauthorized access to the system as

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