{"id":48015,"date":"2021-03-26T13:07:40","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T17:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=48015"},"modified":"2021-03-26T13:07:56","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T17:07:56","slug":"hackers-breach-saluscare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2021\/03\/hackers-breach-saluscare\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackers breach SalusCare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SalusCare<\/a>, the largest provider of mental health services in Southwest Florida, says\u00a0as many as 85,688 patients and employee records were copied and potentially accessed following a malware attack last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Fort Myers-based provider says its database was likely accessed the week of March 15 by means of a \u201cphishing\u201d scam, in which a fraudulent email meant to trick users into providing security information, such as passwords, was sent to one or more SalusCare accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organization’s entire database was then downloaded to a cloud-based storage account managed by Amazon, said Tom Smoot, an attorney for SalusCare. Amazon has since frozen access to that account, Smoot said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of Thursday, it was unknown how many, if any, records were actually accessed from the storage site. \u201cThe worst-case scenario is 85,688 files,\u201d said Smoot, a Fort Myers-based attorney. \u201cBest-case scenario is zero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SalusCare filed a lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday to compel Amazon to provide it with any “audit logs” that would show what data had been accessed from its storage site and to block the hackers’ access to the data. A judge granted those requests on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Amazon did not immediately respond to an interview request Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The files contain extremely personal and sensitive records of patients\u2019 psychiatric and addiction counseling and treatment,” SalusCare stated in its petition to the U.S. District Court in Fort Myers. “The files also contain sensitive financial information such as social security numbers and credit card numbers of SalusCare patients and employees.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SalusCare’s own forensic analysis has concluded that the hackers are based in Ukraine, court filings show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the first such large data breach involving the mental health provider, which provides outpatient services throughout Southwest Florida to about 16,000 patients,  spokesman Todd Cordisco said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SalusCare also operates emergency mental health care units that house involuntary committals of adults and children under Florida’s Baker Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mental health provider apologized to patients in a written statement. Administrators added that they could not rule out that personal information had been accessed by hackers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Know that our response was swift and, based on observations to date, we are optimistic that the most serious damage was avoided and the breach contained.  Moreover, the perpetrator\u2019s tactics are of the type usually associated with stealing credit card numbers, bank account information, social security numbers, and other facilitators of identity theft.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data breaches of medical records are not uncommon. The Fort Myers-based 21st Century Oncology, now part of the Australia-based GenesisCare, had 2.2 million of its patient files accessed by hackers in 2015. The company faced multiple lawsuits as a result and paid a $2.3 million fine to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SalusCare, the largest provider of mental health services in Southwest Florida, says\u00a0as many as 85,688 patients and employee records were copied and potentially accessed following a malware attack last week.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":48016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}