The big news today (as reported in the Wall Street Journal) is the the Nation’s third largest pharmacy chain Rite Aid has entered into an agreement to purchase a prescription benefit manager called EnvisionRx for $2 billion.  Of course this in not the first time that Rite Aid has bought a PBM. As Drug Channels discusses and the FEHBlog recalls, Rite Aid bought the Advance PCS PBM from Eli Lilly for $1.5 billion in 1998 and then sold PCS for $1 billion two years later. Advance PCS is now part of CVS Caremark.. Drug Channels explains why he thinks that this purchase will be successful for Rite Aid. Competition is good.

The Washington Post reports that the White House is creating a Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center modeled on the National Counterterrorism Center. The new center will be fall under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.  The center will focus on identifying threats and acting as a crisis center when major attack like Sony and Anthem occur. The new center “is a good and important step,” [former NCTC Director Michael] Leiter said. “But it is far from a panacea.”

The Washington Post also reports on good cybersecurity work being done in South Korea — which is under cyberattack from North Korea.

Kwon Seok-chul, CEO at computer security firm Cuvepia Inc., said it has been tough to convince executives that it’s more effective to catch bad guys after they’ve infiltrated a network instead of trying to keep them out, which he believes is impossible anyway.
Kwon said his company’s latest monitoring product keeps a log of all activity, dividing it into authorized users and possible attackers. When certain conditions are met, the program sounds an alarm. A response team, he said, can sit back and watch what hackers copy and respond before damage is done. The security team can cut the hacker’s connection or trick the intruder into stealing empty files.
“Because hackers are in your palm, you can enforce any measures that you want,” said Kwon, member of an advisory board for South Korea’s cyberwarfare command.

The article explains that this software acts as a police officer to monitor server firewalls.  This is an encouraging article.