Emergence Health Network Breach Week 9

Another week and another data breach happens. In week 9 a Texas mental health institute was breach. Emergence Health Network in El Paso, Texas was a victim of an internet attack that dates as far back as 2012. Over 11,000 patients were affected from this breach (McGee, 2015). Hospitals and any other institution that hold peoples personal information need to realize that they will be targeted, because of the valuable information they hold.

After finding out about unauthorized activity on the server, Emergence Health Network shutdown the server. Emergence Health Network reported the breach to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on October 16^th, 2015. They alerted the authorities and called in a third party to run forensics on the server. The third party company found that the unauthorized access to the server could date back to 2012. The information stored on the server included patients' first and last names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, case numbers and information indicating that the individual accessed services from EHN or Life Management Center El Paso, the entity's previous name (McGee, 2015). The third party also found that no data was copied or stolen from the server. The third party company thinks that this attack may have been a way to get to another company’s data.  Emergence Health Network will be providing patients with free credit monitoring depending on the case.

After the breach Emergence Heath Network has went through a security overall. They have improved their firewalls and have even hired a third party company to monitor its network. The real question is why wasn’t Emergence Health Network using better information security protection in the first place. After writing this blog for over 8 weeks it seems companies always add more security after they have been breached. The reason for this is because the security is the lowest on the totem pole, but after a breach it becomes top priority.

References

McGee, M. (2015, October 27). Texas Mental Health Center Hacked. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from http://www.databreachtoday.com/texas-mental-health-center-hacked-a-8631