Kentucky Medicaid breach due to computer scam

More than 1,000 Kentucky Medicaid beneficiaries have been notified that their data may have been compromised as part of a computer scam.

Kentucky's Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CFHS) said it sent 1,090 Medicaid beneficiaries a letter notifying them of a data breach that occurred in mid-November. The data included Social Security numbers for approximately half of the beneficiaries. The state agency traced the breach to Hewlett-Packard (HP) Enterprise Services, the vendor that oversees the Medicaid information management system. CFHS said in a release that an employee of Carewise Health, an HP subcontractor, responded to a telephone scam that gave remote access to a computer containing the beneficiaries' information.

The computer was disabled after the breach was reported, and the agency said scams of this nature typically involve charging people for unwanted computer services.

The largest hacker attack on Medicaid beneficiary data occurred in Utah in March 2012. Utah's Department of Technology Services notified 780,000 people that their data, including Social Security numbers for as many as 280,000 individuals, had been compromised.