(Bloomberg) -- Anthem Inc., the second-biggest U.S. healthinsurer, said it’s going to take about 10 to 14 days to figure outwho was affectedby a data breach and begin notifying those people.

The individuals will get letters in the mail and may receivee-mails as well, said Kristin Binns, a spokeswoman forIndianapolis-based Anthem. The costs to deal with the breach won’thurt this year’s earnings outlook, in part because the company hasits own insurance to cover such incidents, she said.

Notifications “will happen as quickly as we can get them out,”Binns said.

Anthem said late yesterday that information such as names,addresses, medical IDs and social security numbers of as many as 80million people was exposed by a cyber-attack on the company’ssystem. Employee information was also exposed, including that ofChief Executive Officer Joseph Swedish. The insurer identified theattack in the middle of last week, notified the Federal Bureau ofInvestigation and hired a cybersecurity firm before publiclydisclosing the breach.

“I want to personally apologize to each of you for what hashappened, as I know you expect us to protect your information,”Swedish wrote in a letter that was posted on a company website andsent to about 3 million people who’ve opted to get e-mails from theinsurer. “We will continue to do everything in our power to makeour systems and security processes better and more secure, and hopethat we can earn back your trust and confidence.”

ID Protection

Anthem, formerly known as WellPoint, said it would provide freecredit monitoring and identity protection services to customerswhose data was compromised. Chris Clonts, an Anthem customer in LosAngeles, said he doesn’t want to wait to find out whether hisinformation was taken by hackers.

“What if my data gets sold and there’s three Chris Clonts all ofa sudden between now and three weeks from now?” he said by phone.“It just seems that that part of their response is trailing.”

David Cordani, CEO of health insurer Cigna Corp., said thecompany has worked to tighten its defenses against cyber- attacks.Cigna has hired professionals to attempt to hack into its systemsto identify vulnerabilities, he said.

“We take the protection of consumer information and consumerdata as a No. 1 priority,” Cordani said in an interview onBloomberg Television. “We have multiple layers of protection.”

‘Enormous Sum’

Home Depot Inc. in November said it faced at least $34 millionin net expenses after hackers stole 56 million payment cards and 53million e-mail addresses. The company said it had a $100 millioninsurance policy for cyberbreaches.

Target Corp. said in August that grossexpenses from a December 2013 data breach were $248 million,cushioned by $90 million of insurance.

The cost to deal with Anthem’s breach is “going to be anenormous sum,” said Katherine Keefe, head of Beazley Plc’s breachresponse service. “Those dollars add up across 80 millionpeople.”

Anthem fell less than 1 percent to $137 at 2:10 p.m. in NewYork. The shares are up 60 percent over the past year as thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, leadsmore people to sign up for health insurance. In January, thecompany forecast sales this year of at least $78 billion.

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