Obamacare data hub looms as privacy threat: Column

• Social Security numbers and tax returns are among personal data that will be transmitted to this hub.
• The Office of the Inspector General flagged several tasks that remained to be completed in August.
• Experts point to the hastily constructed software design as a leading cause of exchange glitches.

Every day, personal information is the subject of hundreds of thousands of hacking attempts from all over the world. From nation states to crime rings, knowing and exploiting your information is big business.

On October 1, a major component of Obamacare made you even more vulnerable to devastating attacks on your personal information and the administration is doing too little about it.

The Federal Data Services Hub (Hub), a component of the health insurance exchanges created by Obamacare, connects seven different government agencies and establish new access points to the sensitive personal information of the American public.

Social Security numbers, employment information, birth dates, health records and tax returns are among the personal data that will be transmitted to this hub, consolidating an unprecedented amount of information. Every shred of data one would need to steal your identity or access your confidential credit information would be available at the fingertips of a skilled hacker, producing a staggering security threat.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has claimed that the hub is essential to verifying the eligibility of individuals for the subsidies offered through the exchanges. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has insisted that no data will be stored in the hub, yet any computer science student would tell you the hub will be a magnet for hackers, creating inherent vulnerability and risk by connecting these seven interfaces.

HHS will have to store user information in their servers as Americans sign up at healthcare.gov. Should cyber hackers access this user information, they could access the rest of the databases the hub is connected to, defeating the encryption HHS assures will protect us. These potential vulnerabilities are a dream of faceless international hackers and hostile foreign intelligence services.

And yet, the Obama administration has provided virtually no information regarding the real time readiness for implementing the hub's security controls necessary to ensure that no data breach occurs.

The hub has also been the subject of criticism from outside auditors. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) flagged several critical tasks that remained to be completed in their most recent report in August, creating real concerns that the Hub had not been properly tested before it went live on October 1.

Shockingly, the Hub was slated to be last tested only two weeks before it was supposed to be fully operational.

Evidence that the exchanges and the hub were not ready on October 1 is already mounting.

Within the first few days of operation, thousands of Social Security numbers were accidentally emailed to an insurance broker. Exchanges immediately began experiencing technical difficulties as enrollment began and information technology experts have pointed to the hastily constructed software design as a leading cause. It is hard to imagine the hub is not experiencing similar technical problems. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that the hub was making inaccurate determinations of eligibility for federal subsidies – calling into question the viability of the whole system.

Information technology is driving the future of health care and it must be part of any reforms moving forward. But the hub puts millions of Americans at risk by creating an open invitation to steal treasure troves of personal data.

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I firmly believe it is in our national security interest to protect the personal information of all Americans. Failure to protect this data will cause catastrophic damage to the security of federal systems as well as expose millions of Americans to personal identity theft.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-MI, is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

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