Home News Data breach exposes medical information of Michigan residents

Data breach exposes medical information of Michigan residents

Health care data breaches

A data breach at Inmediata Health Group, a healthcare billing and administrative service provider, exposed the personal and medical data of Michigan residents, the Detroit News reported.

The Puerto Rico-based healthcare center stated that a technical glitch in the webpage settings permitted search engines to expose internal webpages online, which contained patients’ sensitive information. According to Inmediata, the exposed data included patients’ name, addresses, social security numbers, and other personal health information.

The security officials at Inmediata halted the website temporarily and contacted a digital forensic firm to investigate the incident. The center clarified that there was no discovery of any misuse of the exposed data. The affected patients are suggested to monitor their financial accounts for any fraud transactions.

“We have an opportunity to improve Michigan law by adding the Attorney General’s Office as a required state department to be notified by companies impacted by data breaches. Data breaches can be devastating to the affected individuals. It’s important this office provide affected customers with any and all available resources to help limit the effects of this — or any — breach. And today, we’re doing just that,” said Dana Nessel, the Michigan Attorney General.

“The data security incident that may have involved the limited personal and medical information of some of its customers’ exposed online due to a webpage setting that permitted search engines to index internal webpages that are used for business operations. To date, we have not discovered any evidence to suggest that any information potentially involved in this incident has been subject to actual or attempted misuse,” Nessel added.

A recent report revealed that health care organizations suffered the highest number of data breaches in 2018 across any sector of the U.S. economy. According to Beazley Breach Response, a breach response management and information security insurance solutions provider, the healthcare entities have reported the highest number of data breaches, at 41 percent.

The report, dubbed as Beazley Breach Insights Report, stated that direct hacking, the presence of malware, or due to human error were the causes of data breaches in healthcare organizations. The report also revealed the percentage of breaches in other sectors of the economy. The education sector accounted for 10 percent of security issues, financial institutions reported 20 percent of incidents, and professional services represent 13 percent of cases.

The cybercriminals are attempting to extort cryptocurrency from companies or individuals claiming to have embarrassing evidence of people using adult websites at work, which are related to extortion, the report added.