A news release from Avera Health, a Sioux Falls-based healthcare system, confirms that a data breach in March exposed the sensitive data of 700 patients. Among the stolen information was names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates and email addresses.
The healthcare group learned about the data breach on March 25th yet only began to alert patients who may have been affected on June 10th. Avera says that, after discovering the breach, they retained the services of a “leading forensic investigation firm”.
Avera is not alone in being affected by increasing cyberattacks across the U.S healthcare system. A series of cyberattacks affected Kaiser Permanente in early 2022, in some instances exposing the Protected Health Information (PHI) of its patients.
Like Kaiser, Avera promised to update its security and “deploy additional monitoring tools” in order to combat future ransomware attacks.
“Avera takes our patients’ information seriously, we apologize for any inconvenience and have cooperated fully to ensure people were notified in a timely manner.”
