Partners Healthcare data breach

1 May 2015 · 1 min

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A phishing attack on Partners HealthCare compromised email accounts and exposed data for roughly 3,300 patients across five facilities, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and some Social Security numbers. Attackers gained access when employees clicked malicious links.

Well, hackers may have accessed medical and personal information of Partners HealthCare patients. About 3,300 people are affected by this, a breach that happened when some employees responded to phishing emails, which created an opportunity for unauthorized access to email accounts within the network. So Partners says some of the emails had patient information like name, address, date of birth, and in some instances Social Security numbers as well.
So any breach that contains, uh, sensitive personal information means that the victims themselves are at risk for the rest of their lives. When your Social Security number is compromised, that's essentially the key to the kingdom. It's your national identifier that can be used to open up new lines of credit going forward. So criminals can pose as you for the rest of your life to get credit cards, bank account numbers, and including utilities and mobile phones and so forth.
The people affected by the breach include patients at Brigham and Women's, Mass General, North Shore Medical Center, Partners Continuing Care, and Newton-Wellesley Hospital.