Healthcare organizations are becoming the targets of hackers now days due to highly sensitive data they deal with. The gathered data is worth minting money by selling it online rather than extorting users by stealing their email- password combos.
Labcorp (Laboratory Corporation of America), a leading global life sciences company and the largest clinical laboratories suffered one such major cyber security breach over the weekend!
The firm headquartered in Burlington, North Carolina, runs large network of labs and health care centers across the world and provides diagnostic, drug development and other health care services to more than 115 million patients every year. The annual turnover of the company is estimated to be more than $10 billion.
Labcorp, a fortune 500 company, is known to deliver world class forensic, genetic- specialized test facilities, diagnostic solutions performing routine tests; the most common tests being blood tests, HIV tests and urine analysis.
LabCorp Hacked- The firm took certain computer systems offline
News reveals that the firm systems were hacked this weekend and the miscreants tried to access the reports of its million customers. The suspicious act was discovered only on LabCorp Diagnostic systems. Covance pharmaceutical operations (A Global Contract research Organization acquired by LabCorp in 2014) were left untouched. However, the full report on the information that was compromised is still under scrutiny. LabCorp took certain computer systems offline soon after the intrusion was discovered. So far the company claims to have no evidence of the data being misused or transferred unauthorized.
LabCorps compliance to HIPAA
LabCorp is committed to the protection of their patient’s PHI (protected health information) and alleges to notify users of any data breach within 60 days after the discovery of the breach to comply with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1966).
HIPAA is a United State Legislation that safeguards medical information by providing data privacy and security provisions. The increase in health data breaches by cyber attacks led to the enforcement of this law in recent years.
LabCorp Hacked- Impact of the hack on customers
The act of shutting down the systems after the breach was discovered impacted test processes and the customer’s access to test results over the weekend.
Though testing operations have been resumed, customers may experience brief delays in receiving test results as work in still going on restore full system functionality. The biz has large number of test results and personal health records to manage.
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