Catholic Health faces second breach in five months
For the second time in five months, patients’ information may have been compromised in a data breach at nine Washington hospitals and dozens of others in 17 states across the U.S., according to KIRO 7 TV.
The Washington hospitals are part of the Franciscan Health System, which is part of the national Catholic Health Initiatives.
Catholic Health Initiatives has filed a federal lawsuit against an unknown “John Doe” hacker. Filing the lawsuit allows the hospital group to submit a legal request to Microsoft to provide information about the email accounts used in the hacking.
The lawsuit states during five days at the end of March, the hacker was able to redirect a significant number of emails sent to doctors and staff from patients and laboratories, according to KIRO. Instead of getting to the intended recipients, those emails were directed to the hacker’s account. The lawsuit also said the hacker gained control of domain names like catholichealth.net.
Some account activity could be traced to Pakistan.
This development is unrelated to an email phishing scam that happened earlier in the year, according to the provider.
About 8,300 patients were notified that their information could have been compromised after the phishing scheme was discovered in January.
Franciscan Health System has set up a call center to take patients’ questions.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.