Equitas Health suffered data breach compromising members’ personal information

• The compromised information includes names, dates of birth, patient account and medical record numbers, prescription information, medical history and procedure information, physician names, and more.
• Equitas Health is providing all potentially impacted individuals with free identity monitoring services for 12 months.

What is the issue?

Attackers gained unauthorized access to an Equitas Health employee’s email account that contained a limited number of members’ personal information.

What information was compromised?

The compromised information includes names, dates of birth, patient account and medical record numbers, prescription information, medical history and procedure information, physician names, diagnoses, treatment and clinical information, health insurance information as well as Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

What was the immediate action taken?

On January 08, 2019, Equitas Health detected abnormal activity in its email system. Later it determined that attackers compromised an employee’s email account and gained access to members’ personal information.

• Upon learning the incident, Equitas Health conducted an internal investigation to determine the impact of the incident.
• The healthcare firm notified the appropriate authorities about the incident.
• It has hired a third-party forensics firm to assist them with the investigations.
• It has further taken additional security measures to avoid such incidents from happening in the future.
• Equitas Health is providing all potentially impacted individuals with free identity monitoring services for 12 months.

“At Equitas Health, we take the privacy and security of our members’ personal information very seriously. This is why we are informing you about steps you can take to protect your personal information,” the security notice read.