Monday, August 7, 2017

City of Hope Phished, Again

Duarted-based cancer treatment center City of Hope announced late Friday that it has suffered a phishing incident, where four staff member email accounts were temporarily accessed after an email phishing incident. According to City of Hope, only "limited access" to those accounts occurred after the incident, and that it does not believe there was "any actual acquisition of patient medical information." The company said it notified the Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights and state agencies of this incident as required by law. The incident is not the first time that the cancer center has been successfully phished; the hospital was hit by a much larger phshing attack in March of 2016 where another four staff members lost patient names, medical records, treatment information, and more. After that earlier attack in 2016, City of Hope had said it had bolstered its technical safeguards and training to prevent similar phishing attempts, an effort which apparently fell short; for its part, the organization said it is " evaluating its systems and processes to further strengthen its safeguards to protect against such incidents."

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