I’m going to guess that this isn’t going to end well for Community Health Systems which operates over 200 hospitals in the US. CNN has the details on a rather scary hack that they were the victims of:
Hackers have gained access to their names, Social Security numbers, physical addresses, birthdays and telephone numbers.
Anyone who received treatment from a network-owned hospital in the last five years — or was merely referred there by an outside doctor — is affected.
The large data breach puts these people at heightened risk of identity fraud. That allows criminals open bank accounts and credit cards on their behalf, take out loans and ruin personal credit history.
And the people behind this hack are going to be familiar to those who read this blog:
Community Health Systems (CYH) hired cybersecurity experts at Mandiant to consult on the hack. They have determined the hackers were in China and used high-end, sophisticated malware to launch the attacks sometime in April and June this year.
The FBI said it’s working closely with the hospital network and “committing significant resources and efforts to target, disrupt, dismantle and arrest the perpetrators.”
Here’s why it won’t end well for them. This is a HIPPA violation. That means that people who are affected by this hack can sue for lots of money. And I suspect that lawyers are lining up as we speak to represent those who are affected. Second, you can bet the FBI as well as many other US Government agencies are going to descend on this hospital to see what else might be out of order here. You can bet that they will be very invasive. As far as I’m concerned both of those are good things as private organisations have to do a way better job of protecting data. So anything that encourages that should be welcomed by everyone (except the hackers of course).
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This entry was posted on August 18, 2014 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hospital Network Breached By Hackers… Patient Info Stolen
I’m going to guess that this isn’t going to end well for Community Health Systems which operates over 200 hospitals in the US. CNN has the details on a rather scary hack that they were the victims of:
Hackers have gained access to their names, Social Security numbers, physical addresses, birthdays and telephone numbers.
Anyone who received treatment from a network-owned hospital in the last five years — or was merely referred there by an outside doctor — is affected.
The large data breach puts these people at heightened risk of identity fraud. That allows criminals open bank accounts and credit cards on their behalf, take out loans and ruin personal credit history.
And the people behind this hack are going to be familiar to those who read this blog:
Community Health Systems (CYH) hired cybersecurity experts at Mandiant to consult on the hack. They have determined the hackers were in China and used high-end, sophisticated malware to launch the attacks sometime in April and June this year.
The FBI said it’s working closely with the hospital network and “committing significant resources and efforts to target, disrupt, dismantle and arrest the perpetrators.”
Here’s why it won’t end well for them. This is a HIPPA violation. That means that people who are affected by this hack can sue for lots of money. And I suspect that lawyers are lining up as we speak to represent those who are affected. Second, you can bet the FBI as well as many other US Government agencies are going to descend on this hospital to see what else might be out of order here. You can bet that they will be very invasive. As far as I’m concerned both of those are good things as private organisations have to do a way better job of protecting data. So anything that encourages that should be welcomed by everyone (except the hackers of course).
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This entry was posted on August 18, 2014 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.