The U.S. health conglomerate Kaiser has announced a data breach that occurred earlier this month, affecting 13.4 million of its members. In a legally required notice filed with the U.S. government on April 12 and made public on Thursday, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan revealed that sensitive information of its residents was compromised in the breach. However, the notice did not provide specific details about the nature of the breach, stating only that there was “unauthorized access/disclosure” involving a network server.
Organizations in the U.S. that fall under the health privacy law HIPAA are mandated to report data breaches involving protected health information to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Kaiser also informed California’s attorney general of the breach but did not offer any additional information beyond what was included in the notice. The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan reported having 12.5 million members at the end of 2023, making it one of the largest health-related data breaches of 2024 so far according to DHHS’s website.
The connection between this latest breach and previous cyberattacks at other health tech companies is unclear at this time, although it cannot be ruled out entirely due to ongoing investigations by law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity experts alike into a series of recent incidents targeting sensitive medical records across multiple sectors within healthcare technology systems worldwide – including UnitedHealth Group, which is parent company to Change Healthcare – where hackers stole large amounts of personalized medical data from millions during ransomware attack in February 2024 as reported earlier this week by UnitedHealth Group Inc.. For more information about this data breach at Kaiser, contact our reporter via Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849 or through SecureDrop for secure submission of files and documents