Bon Secours suffers data breach due to former employee.
Employee’s access to patient’s PHI leads can lead to unauthorized activity. Hence, companies are generally advised to monitor the system. The recent incident involves, Bon Secours Kentucky Health System where former employee had accessed PHI information from the system. The total number of affected patients stands at 700. According to the reports, the affected data includes names, dates of birth and the last four digits of their Social Security number.
For few patients, there is wider breach which includes names, dates of service, provider and facility names, patient account numbers (which may have included Social Security numbers), dates of birth, and treatment information, such as diagnosis. Bon Secours found that a user ID and password assigned to a former employee had been used to access information in the Athena health system
“Due to the nature of the access, and out of an abundance of caution to protect our patients, we approached law enforcement, specifically the Secret Service, to assist us with our investigation,” the statement read. “The Secret Service asked Bon Secours to delay notifying patients until their investigation was complete so as not to compromise their investigation.”
Bon Secours notified the affected patients by mail about the breach and one year of free credit monitoring and identity protection services is initiated.
“We are deeply sorry that this occurred,” the statement read. “In response to this matter, we are working with our vendor, Athena, to ensure that all user IDs and passwords to their system are properly and permanently disabled when Bon Secours determines that an employee should no longer have access to information in the Athena system.”
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