More than 422,000 patients of BioReference possibly impacted by the AMCA Breach

The total victims in the AMCA (American Medical Collections Agency) data breach now has crossed 20 Million, as another healthcare organizations (third in total till now) has been confirmed getting affected by this breach. BioReference Laboratories, laboratory as well as clinical testing company based in New Jersey, is the most recent confirmed victim with around 422,600 of their customers personal information getting exposed in American Medical Collections Agency data breach.

BioReference Laboratories, a subsidiary of the OPKO Health, was informed by American Medical Collections Agency about a hack on vendor's payment website on June 3, 2019. Similar to the Quest as well as LabCorp's notification, 8-K filing with U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has showed that this hack started on Aug. 1, 2018, and finished on Mar. 30, 2019.

AMCA informed the BioReference Laboratories that the system contain data of around 422,600 patients, who has received the BioReference testing services in that timeframe of 8 months. The compromised data contains the patient demographic data, balance information, provider names, bank account information, credit cards information, and email addresses.

As per the officials, no security questions or passwords were breached during this hack. Moreover, no diagnostic data, Social Security numbers, and lab results were compromised.

"BioReference has not been able to verify the accuracy of the information received from AMCA," the officials wrote in that filing.

American Medical Collections Agency has confirmed that around 6,600 BioReference Laboratories customers, whose financial information got exposed, were notified by the AMCA and have been offered complimentary identity theft protection and credit monitoring services for 24 months. However, as BioReference Laboratories was still not been provided the impacted patients list nor more information on those individuals, so the breach notification letters was not been sent yet.

AMCA is continuing investigating the incident, and has reported about this breach to the law enforcement. The officials of AMCA said that they have already taken steps in order to bolster the security, which includes web payments page shutting down, migrating it to the third-party vendor, and hiring of an outside cybersecurity company to install more security measures.

The officials wrote that "BioReference and the company take data security very seriously, including the security of data handled by vendor".

» SPAMfighter News - 6/24/2019