Health technology company HealthEquity suffered a data breach, although unrelated to other recent attacks.
The company revealed this attack in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this week claiming that hackers stole some customers’ “protected health information.”
According to the filing, the company discovered “abnormal behavior” earlier this year related to a business partner’s personal device. HealthEquity also determined that this partner’s account was compromised by a hacker who used the account to access member information, including protected health information.
The breach was reported Wednesday (July 3) by TechCrunch. Amy CernyHealthEquity spokesperson, told the outlet that the breach was “an isolated incident” and was not related to other recent attacks, such as that against UnitedHealth-owned Change Healthcare earlier this year.
That report states that HealthEquity discovered the breach on March 25 and “took immediate action, resolved the issue, and began an in-depth analysis of the data, which was completed on June 10.”
The company assembled “a team of external and internal experts to investigate and prepare a response.” Its investigation found that the breach stemmed from the compromised third-party vendor’s account having access to “certain HealthEquity SharePoint data,” Cerny told TechCrunch.
The breach comes amid what PYMNTS described Thursday (July 4) as “the year of the cyberattack,” following a number of high-profile violations.
In addition to the Change Healthcare attack, recent weeks have also seen high-profile breaches at companies ranging from car dealership software maker Global CDK has Neiman Marcus has Developing banking and trust.
“This increased focus on cybersecurity coincides with a broader debate around data security in the connected economy, particularly in connected workplaces and smart homes, where the growing use of connected devices highlights new vulnerabilities, given the large amounts of personal data they collect,” PYMNTS wrote.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Managing fraud in online transactions” found that most e-commerce merchants have suffered cyberattacks or data breaches in the past year. Eighty-two percent of these businesses suffered an attack during this period, and 47% said the breaches led to lost revenue and lost customers.
“It is essentially a contradictory game; criminals want to make money and the financial community needs to restrict this activity. What’s different now is that both sides have some truly impressive technology. Michael Shearersolutions director at Falcon AItold PYMNTS.
“On the automation side, it’s all about data. It’s about organizing and connecting your data, understanding the signals you receive so you can create richer context and make better decisions. But you have to have that information there, and you have to link it together. This is the first step.
