A data breach at Florida-based Health First exposed the personal information of some 42,000 patients, according to various industry media reports this week.
The website DataBreaches.net reported that in early October, the healthcare provider Health First notified the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) of a breach that affected 42,000 patients. The breach actually occurred earlier in the year, however, between February and May 2018, according to the report, which received a statement from the organization’s senior vice president, consumer and retail services.
The Health First executive noted that “a small number of our employees were the victims of a phishing scam which compromised some of our customers’ information. The criminals were able to gain access of these employees’ email accounts for a limited period of time.”
Health First officials also toldFlorida Today this week that the data breach “was fairly low-level, though it could have included some customers' Social Security numbers. Mostly it appears to have involved information such as addresses and birth dates. No medical information was compromised,” according to this report.Phishing attacks continue to plague the healthcare industry; the single largest breach this year was a hacking incident affecting 1.4 million patient records that involved UnityPoint Health, an Iowa-based health system. That said, cybersecurity professionals are still looking for more advanced ways to get out in front of these attacks, as healthcare has traditionally lagged behind other industries in in phishing resiliency.
