Zoll Medical, a company that builds hardware and software for the healthcare industry, filed a report with the Office of the Maine Attorney General earlier this month, in which it detailed the hack that resulted in its data theft.
As reported by Spiceworks, the company filed the document on March 10, in which it claims to have detected the breach on January 28. Furthermore, the report says the company cut the attackers’ access to sensitive data five days later, on February 2.
During the incident, hackers stole sensitive data, belonging to both to company employees and consumers. Apparently, more than a million people were affected by the breach.
Police notified
The company further explained that data stolen includes people’s names, addresses, dates of birth, as well as Social Security Numbers. Furthermore, some details regarding the purchase of Zoll products have also been obtained, such as whether customers used, or planned on purchasing, the LifeVest wearable cardioverter defibrillator.
“We consulted with third-party cybersecurity experts to assist with our response to and remediation of the incident, and we notified law enforcement and federal and state regulatory agencies as required by law,” the company wrote in the filing.
The details of the developments that led to the data exfiltration are unclear. We don’t know if any malware was involved, or if the company actually suffered a ransomware attack. The company did not detail if the threat actors used phishing, or any other social engineering methods, to breach the network and its endpoints.
For hackers everywhere, personal data is a gold mine that can easily be monetized, either by reselling it on dark web forums or using it in phishing and identity theft attacks. With healthcare firms holding huge amounts of sensitive personal data, it’s no wonder that they’re among the most targeted organizations in the world.
“Understanding and tracking the personal health information (PHI) data one holds is a priority for all healthcare organizations,” commented Jocelyn Houle, Senior Director, Data Governance at Securiti.
“Techniques such as data masking can enable key business users to leverage patient data while minimizing the damage caused by a security breach. It's equally important to deploy automation to identify which patient's data lives where and for what purposes it is used to honor patient privacy rights and understand the regulatory impact of an unfortunate data breach.”
Via: Spiceworks (opens in new tab)
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