Lawsuit filed against Banner Health after massive data breach

Although we deal with data leaks primarily over here in the UK, we report on the common ones in the U.S. as well as it serves to show just how serious and how often breaches, leaks, and hacks are happening.

It is an everyday problem.

In America, a lawsuit has been filed against healthcare system, Banner Health. The lawsuit against Banner Health is a class-action lawsuit that has been filed by a Glendale doctor, Dr. Howard Chen. The class-action is being brought because of a cyber-attack on Banner Health that resulted in 3.7 million patients, employees, cafeteria customers, and other people’s information being compromised.

The breach

It was discovered that Banner Health’s database had been hacked in late June. It was first detected that there was unlawful activity taking place on 29^th June, where hackers had been accessing payment card data from hospital cafeterias in Alaska, Wyoming, Arizona and Colorado.

It was later discovered the hackers had access to further information regarding the patient health and insurance records. The records contained names, social-security numbers, dates of birth, doctors, addresses, claims, and insurance information – all very valuable data!

An email was sent that read “It is possible that information from approximately 3.7 million may be be affected by this incident.”

The email went on to offer those that had been affected by the breach one free year of credit monitoring from a credit monitoring firm. This was viewed as highly inadequate for a breach affecting millions of people. Attorney Rob Carey said “It is not enough to offer a skimpy ‘fix’ – the law requires Banner remedy the serious risks it created for its stakeholders.”

They are not the first to offer subscriptions to such services as a form of proposed remedy following as data breach.

Allegations of negligence

Employees of Banner Health were notified over a month after their data had been compromised.

The lawsuit is alleging negligence from Banner Health who allegedly had insufficient data security systems to protect those who became victims in the hack.

Dr. Chen, who brought the claim forward, worked at Banner Health’s Medical centre in Arizona between 2010 and 2013. He used the insurance that was provided by Banner Health, and fears that his personal information is at risk.

Valuable commodity

Our personal data is very important to us, but it can also be a very valuable commodity to those who gain access to it. The lawsuit outlines the danger of identity theft and cyber-crime in particular.

Cyber-crime is a growing enterprise. Our personal information such as our names, identity numbers, credit card numbers, and addresses can all be used by cyber-criminals who will post them online and sell them on.

It can be years before people’s personal information is actually used… So victims of data breaches sometimes never actually know when their information has been compromised and could be used.

Banner Health-care provider have said that they have blocked attackers and that they are “working to enhance the security of its systems in order to help prevent this from happening in future.”

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