LifeLong Medical Care, a Californian healthcare company serving patients in Contra Costa, Marin, and Alameda Counties, has informed selected patients who had their protected health information (PHI) affected in a ransomware attack on Netgain Technologies, its third-party vendor.
Netgain Technologies uncovered a data breach on November 24, 2020 involving ransomware. An internal investigation into the breach confirmed on February 25, 2021 that the attackers acquired access to data containing the data of its customers. The attackers first of all compromised its systems on November 15, 2020.
LifeLong Medical Care mentioned it began a thorough investigation into the security breach and found out on August 9, 2021 that the personal information and protected health information of patients were accessed and/or exfiltrated from Netgain’s network. Impacted patients had their entire name compromised in addition to one or more of the following data elements: Social Security number, date of birth, patient cardholder number, and/or treatment and diagnosis details.
Affected people started to be advised concerning the breach on August 24, 2021, 9 months right after the breach took place. LifeLong Medical Care stated it doesn’t know of any instances of identity theft or incorrect use of patient information because of the incident nevertheless has advised patients whose Social Security number was breached to get no-cost credit monitoring services.
LifeLong Medical Care expressed in its August 24, 2021 breach notification letter that it is fully committed to the safety of information, and is cooperating with third-party vendors to strengthen security and oversight.
The HHS’ office for Civil Rights breach site has yet to report the incident, thus it is not clear yet how many individuals were affected at this period.
Beaumont Health Patients’ PHI Compromised Due to the January 2021 Accellion Data Breach
Beaumont Health, the premier healthcare service provider in Michigan, publicized on August 27, 2021 that the PHI of a number of of its patients was compromised in the attack on Accellion in January 2021. Beaumont Health mentioned it was informed by Goodwin Proctor LLP on February 5, 2021 that patient records were exposed in the attack. Goodwin Proctor had employed the Accellion File Transfer Appliance for transmitting sizeable files among clients, one of which was Beaumont Health.
Goodwin Proctor had acquired files that contain the personal data and PHI of patients of Beaumont Health in association with the legal services furnished by the law company. The breach investigation established that information on the Accellion appliance was saved by the threat actor on January 20, 2021 after taking advantage of a vulnerability. The threat actor, who had a connection with the Clop ransomware gang, then tried to extort cash to avoid the release/vending of the stolen files.
Beaumont Health stated “Goodwin advised Beaumont involving the Accellion security incident following finding out that the data stolen by the threat actor may have included Beaumont patient details. Beaumont eventually carried out its own independent examination of the data affected by the Accellion incident and uncovered on June 28, 2021 that the affected details comprised some patient health data of several Beaumont patients.
The PHI of roughly 1,500 patients was impacted in the breach, which contained patient names, procedure names, physician names, dates of service and internal medical record numbers.
Beaumont Health mentioned it has not acquired any reports of misuse of that details, the same is true with Goodwin Proctor. Goodwin Proctor issued notification letters to impacted persons on behalf of Beaumont Health beginning on August 27, 2021. Goodwin Proctor stated it has stopped its use of the Accellion File Transfer Appliance and is today further assessing its data security policies and operations.
This is the most current in a sequence of data breaches to have an effect on Beaumont Health. In late 2019, Beaumont Health found out a 20-month insider data breach that affected 1,182 patients, documented a phishing attack in April 2020 that impacted 112,000 patients, and an additional phishing-related breach was noted in July 2020 as impacting 6,000 people.