Page 18 - Threat Intelligence 11-15-2019

Data Breach

New Study: Hospital Breaches Could Be Killing Patients. Data breaches at hospitals appear to be having a
serious impact on patient care, increasing mortality rates for years after an incident, according to new
research. Researchers at Vanderbilt University and the University of Central Florida analyzed breach data for
3000 hospitals from 2012-2016 in an attempt to estimate the relationship between breach remediation efforts
and care quality. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) breach data and Medicare Compare's public
data on hospital care measures provided the data sources. What they found was shocking: an increase in 30-
day mortality rate for heart attacks that translated to 36 additional deaths per 10,000 heart attacks per year.
Mortality rates apparently continued to rise for about three years after a breach before tapering off. Breaches
also had a worrying impact on the time it took staff to hook up a patient in the emergency room to an
electrocardiogram (EKG). Time-to-EKG rose by 2.7 minutes following a breach.
Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/hospital-breaches-could-be-killing/

Texas Health Resources Data Breach Impacts 82K Patients. Texas Health Resources recently filed 15 breach
notifications, stemming from a misconfiguration error in its billing system that compromised the data of
82,577 patients. Texas Health is the largest faith-based health system in the state with hospitals and clinics in
16 counties and serving about 7 million patients each year. Officials filed breach reports for each of its 15
hospitals impacted by the security incident. Officials first learned about the security incident on August 23. A
misconfiguration error allowed for patient data to be matched with and sent to the incorrect guarantor for
nearly three months between July 19 an September 4. Misconfiguration errors are common in the healthcare
sector, with an IntSights report finding that 30 percent of online health databases expose patient data.
Source: https://healthitsecurity.com/news/texas-health-resources-data-breach-impacts-82k-patients

Vedantu's data breach risked 680,000 customers data. Bengaluru-based educational technology firm Vedantu
faced a data breach in the last week of September which risked data of 680,000 customers. The vulnerability
exposed customer details including email and IP addresses, names, phone numbers, it said. Vamsi Krishna, the
co-founder of Vedantu, told ET that since the details were stored in an encrypted format, it would not be easy
to misuse easily. Also no sensitive details would have been compromised. He said the vulnerability was fixed
within a few days and customers were informed about the attack and advised to change their passwords.

Source: https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/vedantus-data-breach-risked-
680000-customers-data/71882087

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