PORTLAND, Maine (WGME) — Central Maine Healthcare says an unauthorized party gained access to its network on March 19th, and they kept that access until June 1st.
After weeks of evaluation, officials are now sharing that patient data, including names, birth dates, and diagnosis information, were all accessed by the hacker.
“There can be some very serious implications if that happens,” James E. Lee, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, said.
After a weeks-long shut down of phone and online services, Central Maine Healthcare officials say patient data was likely compromised during a two and a half month period where a hacker gained access to the hospital system’s IT network.
If your data was affected, you should be receiving a letter saying patient names and social security numbers may have been accessed.
“They’ll use that to apply for health benefits, they’ll use it to apply for loans, mortgages, credit cards,” Lee said.
Lee says there are steps patients can take to protect their data going forward, like freezing your credit and changing your passwords for any hospital logins, but he says hospitals, unfortunately, have become a more frequent victim of cyber attacks, and in this case, it took the hospital a while to realize it was under attack.
Anna Coon: “Why might it take so long for a hospital to know that there’s somebody who shouldn’t be in their system, in their system?”
James E. Lee: “Not every organization has the most sophisticated kind of cyber security; they don’t necessarily have all of the monitoring systems and all of the bells and whistles that will tell them when an attack is occurring.”
In a statement, hospital officials say new, enhanced monitoring and alerting systems have been put in place to prevent future issues, adding, “Central Maine Healthcare takes this incident very seriously, and sincerely regrets any concern this may cause.”
A filing on the AG’s website says there were only eight patients affected by the hack. We reached out to the hospital to check if that’s accurate but didn’t hear back.
Central Maine Healthcare is offering free credit-monitoring services to those affected.
Hospital officials say you should also keep an eye on your healthcare insurance for any suspicious activity.
