Arizona-based GenRx Pharmacy has issued a data breach involving a ransomware attack that held its network in September 2020.
The company publishes a notice three months following the incident, stating that they are investigating the matter with the IT experts. GenRx managed to fend off the attack, affecting only five percent of its former customers.
The pharmacy’s business wasn’t affected by the breach, however, thousands of people got their health data tampered with. Backups weren’t interrupted and the systems were back to normal on the same day, September 28, 2020.
Cybercriminals accessed the systems through ransomware and stole files from its network. These files contain the health information of patients that were collected for the shipment of prescribed drugs.
Cybercriminals were able to remove the health information of certain former GenRx patients, including transaction ID, patient ID, e-prescription, full names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, gender, medication list, and health plan.
The company clarified that no financial or payment information was affected by the breach. This is because GenRx Pharmacy doesn’t collect financial information as these remained in the SSNs.
There’s no estimated number of patients disclosed by the company but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services claims that this data breach incident affected around 137,110 patients.
“While the pharmacy is not aware of any actual harm to individuals as a result of the situation, it is providing potentially affected individuals with information via first-class mail regarding steps taken, and what can be done to protect against potential harm,” stated GenRx.
A series of the forensic investigation was deployed to assist with finding out the weak spots in the company’s network and systems. So far, what’s confirmed is that an unauthorized third-party has stolen a small number of files.
Following the incident, GenRx has made additional security measures to prevent the same incident from happening again. It has upgraded its firewall firmware and added anti-virus and web-filtering software.
Moreover, the pharmacy has instituted multi-factor authentication, increased Wi-Fi network traffic monitoring, and provided additional training for all its employees. The company also updated its policies and procedures and installed real-time intrusion detection to all its workstations.
It’s also looking at furthering security options to boost protocols and controls within the company. This includes strengthening the authentication for accessing data. GenRx also notified the authorities regarding the incident.
