LabCorp data breach puts 7.7 million people at risk



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LabCorp, a medical testing company, said 7.7 million customers had seen their personal and financial data revealed as a result of an offense committed by a third-party bill collection company.

The news was announced just days after the same contractor, the American Medical Collection Agency, informed Quest Diagnostics of the magnitude of the violation that affected 11.9 million of its patients. This violation allowed an "unauthorized user" to access financial information, social security numbers and medical data, but not laboratory results.

"AMCA indicated that it was investigating this incident and had taken steps to strengthen the security of its systems, processes and data," LabCorp said in a document filed Tuesday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. "LabCorp takes data security very seriously, including the security of data processed by suppliers."

The offense did not disclose any information such as tests that were ordered or lab results, LabCorp said in the filing. But from August 2018 to March, the hacker was able to access names, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, service dates, account balances and other information.

The offense also revealed credit card and bank numbers associated with about 200,000 accounts, the document said. AMCA informed LabCorp that she was warning these patients.

AMCA, which works primarily with health care companies, said in a statement Wednesday that it was informed of the offense by a security company working with credit card companies. He has since done an internal review, removed his web payments page, hired an external company to review his systems, and moved his web payments portal to a third-party site. He also indicated that he provided credit monitoring for two years to anyone whose social security number or credit card account had been compromised.

"We remain committed to the security of our system, the confidentiality of data and the protection of personal information," said the company.

According to the Resource Center on Identity Theft, nearly 447 million documents were exposed for 1,244 violations last year. The medical and healthcare sector was responsible for 363 incidents, or 29%.

Large companies are frequent targets. The biggest piracy of 2018, against Marriott International, affected 383 million people worldwide. In 2017, the Equifax hack exposed data from 145.5 million people. And 1 billion Yahoo customers were hit during an attack revealed in 2016.

The biggest hacking involving medical data occurred in 2014, when hackers infiltrated the servers of the health insurance company Anthem, compromising the personal information of 79 million people. Hymn later reached a settlement of $ 115 million with the victims. This month alone, the US Department of Justice has charged two Chinese nationals.

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