Individuals Affected by Benefit Plan Administrators, The People Concern and Advocates Inc. Security Breaches

Benefit Plan Administrators Inc. based in Roanoke, VA has lately informed 3,775 people that an unauthorized person acquired access to its system and extracted files containing some of their protected health information (PHI). The breach notification letters do not say clearly when the breach happened, however, the forensic investigation finished on March 15, 2022. Affected individuals received the notification letters on or about June 15.

Benefit Plan Administrators mentioned the extraction of files from its systems which contained the following types of data: complete names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, gender category, claims details, prescription drugs data, and health diagnosis/conditions data. The HHS’ Office for Civil Rights received four separate breach reports. Affected employees include those of Williamson Employment Services, Inc.,
and Alpha Natural Resources Non-Union VEBA Trust.

There was no proof found that indicates the misuse of any of the extracted data. Free credit monitoring services were given to the impacted persons. Benefit Plan Administrators stated the IT section enforced extra safety measures to avoid the same incidents later on.

Email Accounts Breach at The People Concern

Homeless service, The People Concern based in Los Angeles, CA, has found out that an unauthorized third party accessed the email accounts of a number of its employees. The accounts included the sensitive data of community members including birth date, Social Security number, medical insurance details, and medical data relating to care received via its programs.

The security breach was discovered upon seeing suspicious activity in the email accounts. The investigation revealed that unauthorized persons accessed the accounts at different times from April 6, 2021 to December 9, 2021

Because of the breach, The People Concern improved email security measures and offered the affected persons free one-year membership to an identity theft protection and resolution service. It is presently uncertain how many people were affected.

More Individuals Affected by Advocates Inc. 2021 Data Breach

In January 2022, Advocates Inc. based in Framingham, MA began informing people impacted by a cyberattack that compromised its system from September 14, 2021 to September 18, 2021. The incident was at first thought to have impacted 68,236 persons, however, the investigation afterward confirmed that more people were impacted. The analysis of the affected files carried on until June 9, 2022, and more notifications were sent to impacted persons on June 28, 2022. It is presently uncertain how many more people were affected.