The Phishing attack has been becoming a viral issue for the healthcare companies. The latest news to HIPAA is that phishing attack has also affected the Florida Healthy Kids Corporation. On 25th July, 2017 the staff members started getting phishing emails. Some of the staff members also responded to those emails and ultimately gave access to the attacker to get the private information.
When the management realized about the phishing attack, they immediately blocked the access to the email accounts. The situation was clearly handled on time. The hacker had access the accounts containing data for about 24 hours. At that time, it was possible that the attacker could access the email and copy the information. Although, there is not any serious report about the data misuse. Therefore, it is still not clear either the information was stolen or not?
The analysis of the situation stated that PHI of 2000 people have been access. On 7th Sep 2017, about 1700 people were informed that their information has been breached in Phishing attack incident. The remaining 300 patients were unable to access because their contact information was not valid. A breach notice has also been added to the official website of the company. In addition to this, a notification has also been added to the online accounts to warn the affected people when you login their accounts in future.
The exposed information contained the phone numbers, addresses, the names, SS numbers, and the family account no. The affected people have been offered to get the credit monitoring services for free for a year via LifeLock. According to Florida Healthy Kids Corporation, the rules and policies will be amended and uploaded to control such breaches in future.