You asked for more vertical speak with respect to security. So by popular demand we are presenting another health care technology security story. This story relates to the databases maintained by agencies and a large diagnostic testing laboratory service. This was brought to our attention by contributor Denis Wilson and his effort follows.
This hack is having effects around the world
Recently it was reported that as a direct consequence of the American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA) hack, Quest Diagnostics (one of the largest diagnostic testing laboratory services in the United States) was breached. This resulted in the exposure of millions of patient records. NOTE: See our blog post in this regard
These records may have included Social Security numbers, payment card information, and personally identifiable medical information.
Now, a second report has surfaced, this time involving OPKO Health Inc, which maintains offices in more than thirty countries around the world. They’ve recently reported that one of their subsidiaries, BioReference Laboratories, Inc has received the same notification the Quest Labs received. They’ve been breached, and as a result, more than 400,000 Opko Health Clients have had their personal and confidential data exposed.
Granted, this breach is not nearly as large or as sweeping as the recent Quest Labs breach. Taken together, however, that leaves nearly 12 million patient records exposed. It hasn’t been a good month for companies operating in the health care space, to say the least.
Part of the official statement about the breach reads
“AMCA advised that AMCA’s affected system includes information provided by BioReference that may have included patient name, date of birth, address, phone, date of service, provider, and balance information. In addition, the affected AMCA system also included credit card information, bank account information (but no passwords or security questions) and email addresses that were provided by the consumer to AMCA.
AMCA has reported to BioReference that it is continuing to investigate this incident,
Read more HERE.
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