Hackers Targeted Sacred Heart Health System

Florida, USA situated Sacred Heart Health System of late declared that hackers managed to acquire admission into a PC belonging to an intermediate billing vendor so they could reach the secret information of about 14,000 patients, published ricksblog.biz dated March 17, 2015.

Actually, hackers through a phishing assault acquired admission into a staff member's e-mail account who worked at the billing company.

It maybe noted that phishing assaults involve fraudulent e-mails, which seem as coming from one genuine person or company, as they contain baits for the e-mail recipients to act by following a given web-link that takes onto some phony website or downloading malware onto their computers from attachments in such e-mails so their e-mail accounts can be compromised.

Now, as a consequence of the latest phishing assault, the health data of some patients at Sacred Heart got compromised that consisted of name of patients, their birth dates, the service date, physician name, diagnosis along with treatment processes, and total expenses.

And while the Social Security Numbers of about 40 persons too got accessed, the hackers, however, couldn't manage in reaching medical records of patients.

Also, when on 2nd February 2015, Sacred Heart got notification about the security breach; the organization and the billing company together instantly started one detail investigation.

Privacy Officer Genevieve Harper at Sacred Heart Health System stated that the organization greatly valued patient data's safety and privacy so it regretted the disturbing incident. According to him, it was on top of their activity list to help all of the affected patients, thus published ricksblog.biz.

Harper further said that all essential as also suitable measures were being taken for stopping the kind of happening ever again. In particular, the health system was coordinating with its billing company for making sure the latter continuously changed and evaluated its efforts towards improving the privacy/safety of sensitive/confidential data within its possession.

Those impacted with the breach have been suggested to call 877-244-8984 from 8 am-6 pm, any day from Monday-Friday incase they've any queries. There's also free service to get credit reports for anxious individuals, from TransUnion, Experian alternatively Equifax.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/28/2015