Several hundred million people’s personal information was compromised in a hack of UnitedHealth’s (UNH.N) tech unit Change in February, according to data published by the U.S. health department on its website. That makes it the largest healthcare data breach in American history.
The CEO of UnitedHealth, Andrew Witty, warned at a congressional hearing on May 12 that a third of all Americans’ health records may have been breached as a result of the cyberattack.
As a result of a ransomware attack in February, Change Healthcare published a data breach notification warning that a “considerable quantity of information” about a “substantial proportion” of Americans was exposed by the February ransomware attack.
One of the most severe breaches of the American healthcare system has been UnitedHealth’s report that hackers may have stolen a third of Americans’ data in what is being called one of the worst attacks of its kind. In June, the company began notifying patients who were affected by the outbreak.
A statement released by the Health and Human Services Department this week, which accompanies the department’s report, indicated that about a third of the medical data of Americans was exposed in a data breach that occurred in February. UnitedHealth made a statement back in April that the cyberattack had compromised sensitive data for “a substantial proportion of Americans”. According to these findings, that statement is confirmed.
This article has been indexed from CySecurity News – Latest Information Security and Hacking Incidents
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