People continue to deal with effects of Norton cyber attack, including children

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Millions of people continue to deal with the effects of a cyber attack against Norton Healthcare's systems including children.

Since Norton said it would send out notification by mail to around 2.5 million people about the ransomware attack, several children have received the letters.

"I am a little anxious about what could happen," parent Kevin Kays said.

Kays and his wife received notification from Norton. As did his two children.

"I just don't want it to hurt them, or their credit, or anything in the long run," Kays said.

Adrian Lauf, a cyber security expert and UofL professor, said the "target" in cyber attacks varies, but children are vulnerable because their information may be monitored less frequently than adults.

"It's probably relatively easy, in some cases, to perform some sort of a fraud against information, such as opening up a line of credit for a child's social security number, a parent probably won't be checking for that," Lauf said.

Lauf also said children today, have a large digital foot print, which makes them more vulnerable to have information taken.

"Children that are born into the world today, their information is stored in a lot of databases, a lot of registries, a lot of information sources, more so than ever before," Lauf said.

Lauf suggests parents limit posting their child's information online to prevent any potential issues. That information could be used with stolen data, and used to open credit accounts.

"You often get asked those highly personal questions such as 'did you ever interact with such and such person? Did you ever live on such and such street? They give you four options, some of the options? Maybe none of the above?' It is a little bit harder, but obviously not impossible," Lauf said. "I would probably not post anything that you would just not shout randomly on an open street."

He also encourages families to take the extra step and periodically check that no credit activity is created with their child's information.

Which is something Kays said he plans to already do.

"I'm probably just going to every six months or a year look it up," Kays said.

Norton has previously said files that were impacted included personal information "primarily" about patients, employees and dependents, the company said. Impacted information varied from person to person, and may have included: name, contact information, Social Security Number, date of birth, health information, insurance information, and medical identification numbers, Norton said. Driver's license numbers and other government ID numbers, financial account numbers or digital signatures may have also been included in the data.

The breach has been the subject of speculation for months as the company worked to recover its information, and patients struggled to obtain prescriptions and schedule appointments.

Moving forward, Norton said it was working with external cybersecurity experts and federal law enforcement to "terminate the unauthorized access" and is "further enhancing its security safeguards."

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