Emory Healthcare, the largest healthcare organization in the State of Georgia has been hit by a cyber attack compromising around 80,000 patient records. As per our sources, the hack took place in January this year. But Emory chose to make it public in the mid of this week.
The hackers who launched the attack on the database of Emory locked the files of the Atlanta-based healthcare and have demanded a ransom to restore the site. There is no news on whether the healthcare authorities bowed to their demand or choose to ignore it.
However, as a result of the breach, the appointments of more than 79,930 patients seeking healthcare help from Emory’s Orthopedics & Spine and the Brain health center have to be canceled. Some sources from the healthcare organization, who like to be anonymous say that patient details like names, date of births, contact info including social security numbers, internal medical record numbers, appointment info and some financial data were compromised.
After reviewing the entire situation after January 6th,2017, the healthcare organizations decided to refine its security measures for internal and third party computer systems to avoid all such future attacks.
But when a security research center named MacKeeper also breached Emory’s database in this month. It was then that Emory- the healthcare provider decided to make public all the details related to cyber attacks launched on its organization in this year. Remember, MacKeeper was the one who announced to the world in January first week that Emory was hit with Harak1r1 ransomware.
The American healthcare provider has announced to the media this week that it has contacted all the affected patients via email to inform about the breach. As per our sources, the data which was leaked out is mainly related to those patients who took appointments between March 25th,2015 and January 3, 2017, at the Orthopedics and Spine center.
Those who took appointments at the Brain Health Center between December 6, 2016, to January 3rd,2017 were also affected.
Note- The Emory Healthcare Network which comprises of more than six hospitals and 16,000 employees was established in 2011, and consists more than 1,800 physicians concentrating in 70 different sub-specialties.
More details are awaited!
