1.4 Million Patients Warned of Data Breach Following Ransomware Attack

Exploit: Ransomware
Company: St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System
Industry: Healthcare
Sources: https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/us-healthcare-org-sends-data-breach-warning-to-1-4m-patients-following-ransomware-attack

The healthcare network of St. Joseph’s/Candler (SJ/C) recently reported a ransomware incident that took place as early as December 2020. While the breach is presumed to have occurred late last year, the hospital system’s IT staff uncovered the intrusion on June 17, 2021.

It is reported that the hospital was relegated to briefly using pencil and paper for recordkeeping after the initial intrusion opened the door for cybercriminals to deploy their ransomware payload. Fortunately for the hospital’s staff, IT systems have been restored as investigation is still underway.

The data breach is expected to affect 1.4 million patients with compromised data including patient names, addresses, birth dates, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, account numbers, various health information and medical records, billing account numbers and other financial information.

SJ/C has yet to confirm whether a ransom was paid to regain control of their systems. However, they did mention new security safeguards and protocol are being implemented in order to hopefully prevent future incidents from happening, “To help prevent something like this from happening again, we have implemented, and will continue to adopt, additional safeguards and technical security measures to further protect and monitor our systems.”

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