Connecticut Hack Compromises Health Records of a Million Patients

On January 30, Community Health Center in Connecticut revealed to the Attorney General of Maine that it had suffered a data breach which resulted in the theft of the medical records of more than a million patients.

Community Health Center’s CEO Mark Masselli then wrote a letter to the affected patients informing them that a skilled criminal actor accessed their system and obtained data that could possibly include the personal information of the patients. Since no data was encrypted or deleted, the CEO believes that the attack wasn’t a ransomware attack. Additionally, the operations of the center weren’t affected by the attack, giving further credence to the thinking that the breach wasn’t motivated by the need to demand money from the health facility.

Masselli says the center managed to halt the data breach within hours of its occurrence, which is why the system wasn’t compromised further. At the moment, the system of the health center isn’t under any threat from those illicit actors and further measures have been taken to avert any future attack. These measures include installing software to scan for any illicit activity within the system.

However, there is concern about the possible fallout resulting from the data that was accessed. This data possibly included the social security numbers of patients, their addresses and names, their medical diagnoses, contact information, health insurance information, test results and treatment details. Given that the health information of wealthy or prominent individuals like politicians was accessed, it is likely that these individuals could be targeted by the cybercriminals with threats of exposing their data if they don’t pay up.

Health facilities are coming under increasing attack by cybercriminals for a number of reasons. First, medical centers typically rely on donations and federal government funds, which leaves them cash-strapped and unable to access the best cybersecurity measures. Additionally, medical facilities are easier to target because they are more likely to succumb to the demands of hackers in order to ensure continuity of service provision or to protect sensitive data. Given that the health data of wealthy people or politicians is available in the records of health facilities, criminals are lured to target medical facilities in order to access this valuable information and target those individuals.

It is therefore increasingly important for healthcare data to be heavily protected so that any attempts to compromise those systems are thwarted. Attacks are bound to increase over the coming years, so preventive action is urgently required.

Lots of lessons on best practices could be learned from entities like HealthLynked Corp. (OTCQB: HLYK) that have been in the business of leveraging health data to provide a variety of services to their clientele for a long time.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to HealthLynked Corp. (OTCQB: HLYK) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/HLYK

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