U.S. nonprofit healthcare giant Maternal & Family Health Services has confirmed hackers accessed sensitive patient, financial and medical information months earlier.
In an advisory published on its website on Thursday, MFHS said a “sophisticated ransomware incident” exposed the sensitive information of current and former patients, employees and vendors. This information included names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial account data and payment card information, usernames and passwords, and medical and health insurance information.
The organization, which serves more than 90,000 individuals across Pennsylvania, said it was made aware of the incident on April 4, 2022 but may have been initially compromised as far back as August 21, 2021, citing an investigation conducted by an unnamed forensic incident response firm.
It then took MFHS a further nine months to publicly disclose the incident.
When reached for comment, Patrick McGloin, a partner at Gaffney Bennett, a public relations firm representing MFHS, declined to answer our questions beyond providing a boilerplate statement. It’s not yet known why MFHS didn’t publicly disclose the cyberattack sooner, who was behind the attack, or whether MFHS paid a ransom demand.
Healthcare organizations are a frequent target for ransomware attacks, and at least 25 healthcare providers operating 290 hospitals were hit by ransomware in 2022, according to recent data from Emsisoft. This includes Chicago-based medical giant CommonSpirit Health, which confirmed that an October ransomware attack exposed the personal data of more than 620,000 patients.
Hawk AI, a German company developing anti-money laundering (AML) and tangential fraud prevention smarts for financial institutions, has raised $17 million in a Series B round of funding. Prior to now, Hawk AI had raised $10 million, and with a fresh $17 million in the bank, the company said that it plans to bolster its product […]
Apple on Monday released a new version of the iPhone and iPad’s operating systems to fix a vulnerability that hackers were exploiting in the wild, meaning they were taking advantage of it to hack Apple devices. On the security update page, Apple wrote that it “is aware of a report that this issue may have […]
British newspaper The Guardian has confirmed that cybercriminals accessed the personal details of U.K. staff members during a ransomware attack last month. The Guardian confirmed the data breach in an update emailed to staff on Wednesday, which the newspaper reported shortly after. The email, signed by the news outlet’s chief executive Anna Bateson and editor-in-chief […]
Leave a Reply