“A petition has been filed before the Madras High Court seeking a probe into the alleged data breach at national insurance firm, Star Health Insurance.
on Monday, Justice M Dhandapani briefly heard the petition filed by cyber security researcher Himanshu Pathak highlighting the massive data breach and seeking immediate action.
While Senior Advocate Srinath Sridevan, who appeared for Pathak, urged the Court to direct the Union government to initiate a probe into the incident, the union Ministry of Electronics and Information told the High Court that any inquiry into the incident can be conducted by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) and not the Central government.
Justice Dhandapani then said the Court will pass orders on October 17 on the limited point of whether the Union government has the authority to conduct a probe into the incident.
Last month, the Star Health and Allied Insurance was hit by a cyber-attack as a result of which personal data including mobile numbers, PAN, addresses and pre-existing medical conditions of about 3.1 crore customers of the insurance company were allegedly made available on a website created by a hacker identified as “xenZen.”
The hacker claimed that the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of the insurance firm sold all the data and later tried to change the terms of their deal.
In his petition, Pathak has sought directions to the Central government and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to halt Star Health’s online operations.
Pathak has also sought directions to the Central government to initiate a probe into how the company’s CISO and senior management sold millions of critical customer records, including sensitive medical data to a Chinese hacker.
On October 9 this year, the insurance firm confirmed it had been victim to a cyber attack that had resulted in unauthorised and illegal access to certain data and said in a public statement that a probe was on.
On Monday, Star Health Insurance told the Court that it had also filed a civil suit seeking among other things, an injunction against making any of its data public.”
https://www.barandbench.com/news/petition-madras-high-court-seeks-probe-star-health-insurance-data-breach#:~:text=other%20things%2C%20an%20injunction%20against%20making%20any%20of%20its%20data%20public.