Hackers have accessed the private medical records of over 100 million people within 2015.
Cyber attackers targeted US health insurance firms on a grand scale, with the largest hack of health care records in history taking place at Anthem in March this year.
Around 78.8million people were affected by that breach, which experts believe originated in China.
According to figures from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), five large cyber attacks led to about 108.8million people having their medical records illegally accessed.
Investigators that Chinese hackers had been accessing Anthem’s systems for months and were only caught out when a worker spotted an odd glitch, the Financial Times reported.
The Chinese government has denied any involvement and the U.S. authorities have declined to comment on specific cases.
Eight of the 10 largest ever hacks of medical records took place this year, according to the HHS.
Under privacy laws, medical insurance firms have to protect private data and can face strict penalties if they fail to do so.
‘For a lot of them it is often less of a priority than it should be,’ Deven McGraw, deputy director of health information privacy at the HHS’s office of civil rights, told the FT.
Health insurance provider Cigna Corp has hired hackers to attack its own systems so the company can find out how to improve their security.
Read More: 100M hacked health care records make 2015 the sector’s worst year yet for cybersecurity
