Over 20,000 Iowa Medicaid Members Affected By Data Breach

The Iowa Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS) within the US confirmed on Tuesday that the private information of 20,800 Iowans who obtain Medicaid was uncovered attributable to a cyber-attack.

In accordance with the division, the Iowa Medicaid system itself was not compromised. As a substitute, the breach was attributable to an assault on a contractor’s laptop techniques that occurred between June 30 and July 5 2022.

The contractor, Telligen, performs annual assessments for Medicaid members. The corporate, in flip, subcontracted a part of that work to Impartial Dwelling Programs (ILS), which was the agency compromised within the assault.

“Disclosure of this breach took far too lengthy. Eight months handed between ILS detecting the breach and Iowa HHS informing victims,” mentioned Paul Bischoff, shopper privateness advocate at Comparitech.

“Lots of harm may have already been performed. Criminals may use the breached information for id theft, Medicaid fraud and phishing, amongst different assaults.”

Information uncovered within the breach included names, Medicaid particulars and different delicate info.

“Whereas it’s all the time regarding when a company has an information breach, when the knowledge that’s misplaced is medical in nature, it may be much more of a difficulty,” commented Erich Kron, safety consciousness advocate at KnowBe4.

In accordance with the safety professional, the lack of medical info can simply be used to steal somebody’s id, and social engineers can use the info to focus on victims by referencing info they consider is personal. 

“This permits attackers to achieve belief with the victims rather more shortly,” Kron defined.

Learn extra on healthcare information safety right here: #HowTo: Defend Healthcare Suppliers’ Information

Additionally commenting on the information, Chris Hauk, shopper privateness advocate at Pixel Privateness, urged clients to benefit from the free credit score monitoring and the free credit score report.

“They need to additionally manually regulate their accounts whereas additionally staying alert for any phishing makes an attempt from the dangerous guys,” Hauk added.

The ILS incident comes nearly three years after an Ohio Medicaid supplier suffered an information breach.