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Morgantown, W.V., Hospital Data Breach Impacts 400K People

Although Mon Health System indicates that it discovered a data breach in the middle of December, it learned of potential data theft about two weeks after the hack. Patients, employees and companies were affected.

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(TNS) — According to published reports, Mon Health System began notifying its patients, employees and companies with which it does business about a cyber attack that may have resulted in their data being stolen.

The Morgantown-based health care services company discovered the hack Dec. 18, when some of its IT systems were disrupted, but learned of the potential data theft only a couple of weeks later. The attackers had access to the organization's network between Dec. 8 and Dec. 19.

According to the report in Security Week magazine, the data breach may have resulted in patient information as well as employee, provider and contractor data being stolen. However, the attackers were not able to access the organization's electronic health records systems.

"Affected data, Mon Health says, includes names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, health insurance claim numbers, medical record numbers, patient account numbers, medical treatment information, and various other data," Security Week reported.

When they learned about the attack, Mon Health officials took down parts of its network, reset passwords across the company, hardened its network, and notified the relevant authorities.

Mon Health officials said the company has begun notifying impacted patients by way of mail, but did not provide details on the number of affected individuals.

The December data breach marks the second IT compromise of 2021. Between May 10 and Aug. 15, Mon Health announced a business email compromise incident involving unauthorized access to its email system.

The attack impacted roughly 400,000 people, the company told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in December.

©2022 the Times West Virginian, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.