Recently, the U.S. health conglomerate Kaiser Foundation Health Plan notified millions of its members of a data breach that occurred earlier this month. According to a legally required notice filed with the U.S. government on April 12 and made public on Thursday, 13.4 million residents had their information compromised in the breach. However, the notice did not provide specific details about the nature of the breach, stating only that there was “unauthorized access/disclosure” involving a network server.
Organizations in the U.S. that fall under the health privacy law HIPAA are mandated to report data breaches involving protected health information to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Kaiser also informed California’s attorney general of the breach but did not offer any additional information about it. It is unclear whether this breach is connected to other recent cyberattacks in the healthcare industry, such as those targeting US health tech giant Change Healthcare in February or UnitedHealth Group earlier this week, which disclosed that sensitive health information pertaining to a substantial proportion of people in America was stolen by criminal hackers without providing an exact number of affected individuals.
The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan reported having 12.5 million members at the end of 2023, making it one of the largest healthcare providers in California and nationwide. The DHHS website has identified this breach as one of the largest health-related data breaches of 2024 so far due to its impact on millions of people’s personal and medical information security and privacy rights