Medical firm Shields gets charged after the 2022 security breach

January 25, 2023
Medical Firm Shields US Charged 2022 Security Breach Health Care

In 2022, a Massachusetts-based healthcare firm, Shields Health Care Group, had reportedly been hit with a data breach attack that exposed the data of over two million patients to hackers. Due to that incident, the medical firm will face two proposed class action lawsuits this year, coming from seven consolidated class action lawsuits filed against them last year.

Shields Health Care Group is a medical imaging institution serving over 40 locations in New England. The healthcare firm also mostly has clustered branches in Massachusetts, providing MRIs, PET/CT diagnostic imaging, radiology, ambulance services, and other medical imaging services to its patients.

 

The attack on Shields medical firm is one of the five largest cyber incidents reported to the Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (HHS OCR) in 2022.

 

According to reports, the two lawsuits filed against the medical firm comprise negligence and recklessness in protecting patients’ sensitive data, breach of contract, invasion of privacy, failure to immediately notify the affected individuals, and other violations of different state laws.

It could be recalled that on March 28 last year, Shields published a statement about detecting suspicious activity that compromised patients’ data. After an initial investigation, the medical firm found that an unauthorised entity had hacked into some of Shields’ internal systems for two weeks between March 7 and 21.

This security incident exposed massive sensitive information, including patients’ full names, dates of birth, residential addresses, Social Security numbers, medical diagnoses, billing information, insurance numbers, patient IDs, medical record numbers, and other treatment details.

Furthermore, the two lawsuits against the Shields Health Care Group prohibited them from “engaging in unlawful acts, omissions, and practices” related to data privacy and security and charged them for the monetary damages the incident caused.

As of now, the medical firm has not yet commented on the issue.

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