Kids’ dental care provider suffers data breach
A children’s dental healthcare provider has disclosed a cyberattack that exposed the personal records of more than 100,000 patients and clients.
Image by Cybernews
A children’s dental healthcare provider has disclosed a cyberattack that exposed the personal records of more than 100,000 patients and clients. The potentially compromised data includes names, addresses, emails, and medical details.
Acadia Health, aka Just Kids Dental (JKD), made the disclosure to authorities in the US this month after spotting an intrusion of its computer systems on August 8th.
By then, the threat actor had already had illegal access for almost a week, JKD admitted in a letter sent to affected current and former employees, adult customers and parents, and guardians of child patients. It places the total number of potential victims at 129,623.
“A program was used to encrypt JKD’s computer networks and data, including systems that Just Kids Dental uses to store certain patient and employee files,” it said.
The targeted data included names, physical and email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, Social Security, medical record and driver’s license numbers, health insurance and treatment information including radiographic images, and details of health conditions.
Intriguingly, JKD appears to have been contacted by the culprit during the course of its investigation into the incident last month.
“No patient banking or credit card account information was obtained,” it said. “The malicious actor confirmed to JKD that it deleted the data without distributing it, so we do not expect there to be future misuse. However, we are sending you this notice in an abundance of caution so you can take the steps you feel necessary to protect your information.”
JKD has offered no compensation to victims, but insists that it has taken “steps to investigate the incident and secure and safely restore its systems and operations.”
The healthcare provider further urges victims and their guardians “to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft and fraud, to monitor your account statements, and to watch for suspicious or unauthorized activity.”
More from Cybernews:
British firm unveils plans for underwater colony
Hacktivists enjoy free rein as Ukraine war rages on
Russian brought to US on tech smuggling charges
Subscribe to our newsletter