Fintech
Healthcare FinTech HealthyEquity Hit by Data Breach
Healthcare technology company Health Equity suffered a data breach, although not related to any other recent attacks.
The company revealed that the attack in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this week, which alleges that hackers had stolen the “protected health information” of some customers.
According to the filing, the company discovered “abnormal behavior” associated with a business partner’s personal device earlier this year. HealthEquity also determined that the partner’s account had been compromised by a hacker who used the account to access member information, including protected health information.
The violation was reported TechCrunch Wednesday (July 3). Amy CernyA spokesperson for HealthEquity told the news agency that the breach was “an isolated incident” and was not connected to other recent attacks, such as one at UnitedHealth-owned Change Healthcare earlier this year.
The report states that HealthEquity discovered the breach on March 25 and “took immediate action, remediated the issue, and initiated a thorough data analysis, which was completed on June 10.”
The company assembled “a team of external and internal experts to investigate and prepare for the response.” Its investigation found that the breach stemmed from the compromised third-party vendor account having access to “certain HealthEquity SharePoint data,” Cerny told TechCrunch.
The breach comes in what PYMNTS described Thursday (July 4) as “the year of the cyberattack,” following a series of high-profile violations.
In addition to the attack on Change Healthcare, high-profile breaches have also occurred in recent weeks at companies ranging from a car dealership software maker Global CDK TO Neiman Marcus TO Evolve Bank & Trust.
“This increased emphasis on cybersecurity coincides with a broader conversation about data security in the connected economy, particularly in the connected workplace and smart home, where the growing use of connected devices exposes new vulnerabilities given the vast amounts of personal data they collect,” PYMNTS wrote.
The PYMNTS Intelligence Report “Fraud Management in Online Transactions” found that the majority of eCommerce merchants have suffered a cyberattack or data breach in the past year. Eighty-two percent of those businesses had suffered an attack in that period, and 47% said the breaches resulted in lost revenue and customers.
“It is essentially a opponent’s game; criminals are there to make money, and the financial community needs to limit this activity. What is different now is that both sides are armed with some really impressive technology,” Michael SbaragliaSolutions Manager at AI Hawktold PYMNTS.
“When it comes to automation, it’s all about data. It’s about organizing and connecting the data together, understanding the signals you have so you can create richer context and make better decisions. But you have to have that information there, and you have to connect it together. That’s the first step.”