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The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation is preparing to deploy AI to strengthen cybersecurity two years after it encountered a serious ransomware attack that possibly exposed data of over 40 million people.
A state news report cited PhilHealth acting president and CEO Edwin Mercado as saying that they plan to integrate AI into their system with support from the Department of Information and Communications Technology.
According to Mercado, AI will be applied in procurement, claims adjudication, and cleaning up PhilHealth’s membership database.
PhilHealth targets a cleaned-up database by next year and AI implementation by 2027.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
On 22 September 2023, PhilHealth was hit by a Medusa ransomware attack, which forced it to shut down some of its services. It affected 72 workstations, the e-claims system, the member portal system, and the collection system. Hackers reportedly proceeded to leak the records of some 42 million people on the dark web after the Philippine government failed to pay a ransom of $300,000.
The following year, PhilHealth moved its legacy systems into the ePhilHealth platform, which streamlined access to its various services.
As part of measures to protect members' data and prevent future attacks, the state health insurer also implemented facial recognition and real-time verification systems. It is currently going around the country to educate members about these new security functionalities.
