TRICARE Members Affected by Data Breach to Receive Credit Monitoring

Some 4.9 million members of the TRICARE — the health care system for military members, retiress and their benefits — who were affected by a data breach in Sepember can have their credit monitored, the Department of Defense announced late last week.

"These additional proactive security measures exceed the industry standard to protect against the risk of identity theft," said Brig. Gen. W. Bryan Gamble, TMA deputy director, in a release. "We take very seriously our responsibility to offer patients peace of mind that their credit and quality of life will be unaffected by this breach."

Those affected could have been treated any time in the past 20 years.

 There is no evidence any of the data has actually been accessed by a third party, and analysis shows the chance any data was actually compromised is low.Proactive measures are being taken to ensure potentially affected patients are kept informed and protected.

     The data involved in the breach may contain names, Social Security numbers, addresses and phone numbers, and some personal health data such as clinical notes, laboratory tests and prescriptions.  There is no financial data, such as credit card or bank account information, on the information that was taken.

Concerned individuals may contact the Science Applications International Corp. Incident Response Call Center, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.  Eastern time at 855-366-0140 (toll free) for U.S. callers and 952-556-8312 (collect) internationally.