HealthEquity, a leading provider of health savings account (HSA) services, has announced it suffered a data breach recently, resulting in compromised customer protected health information (PHI).
It is understood the breach was detected on March 25, 2024, after abnormal activity was flagged from a business partner’s device. Once an investigation was carried out, it was revealed that a threat actor had accessed and exfiltrated data from HealthEquity’s SharePoint system.
HealthEquity mobilised and launched a forensic investigation to determine the impact of the breach and to action mitigation and remediation steps.
It has been confirmed that no malware was discovered and business operations remained unaffected but the accessed data did include personally identifiable information (PII) and PHI. HealthEquity has begun the process to notify individuals that may have been affected and is offering complimentary credit monitoring and identity restoration services.
Upon hearing the news, this has been the reaction from the cybersecurity industry:
Erich Kron, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4:
“Unfortunately, the theft of PHI can be very detrimental to those impacted, as there is a lot of sensitive information, including social security numbers and in many cases information about procedures or ailments that may be embarrassing. It is also information that can be used for subsequent social engineering attacks. By referencing a procedure or test that an individual might think is private and known only to medical professionals, bad actors can more easily build trust with potential victims.
This is also a lesson in the protection of data outside of the most common systems. It is not unusual to find that employees have used tools such as spreadsheets to collect information and process it without the knowledge of the IT a ..
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