Last month I noted a breach involving AssureCare Risk Management (ARM) that affected employees and their dependents at Reznick Group. ARM had notified Reznick that there had been a series of attempted network intrusions coming from IPs overseas and even domestically. In response to the intrusions, ARM contracted with Kroll to investigate the attacks that occurred at the beginning of the May. Their description of the incident and Kroll’s findings are linked from ARM’s web site. Kroll could not conclusively confirm that unencrypted protected health information had not been copied by the intruders:
In the course of its analysis, Kroll found that unauthorized access by multiple external intruders was attempted successfully on or around, or between, May 9 and May 10, 2011. It appears likely, based on Kroll’s examination, that the unauthorized access originated from parties in China, Bulgaria and Texas. Kroll further determined that data stored by ARM on the Server included unencrypted personal health information (“PHI”) and possibly PHI in plain text. However, while the forensic examination revealed that the Server was accessed, it does not appear that PHI copied.
But the May intrusions may not have been the end of ARM’s problems with hackers.
An entry on HHS’s breach tool indicates that Ashley Industrial Molding, Inc. in Indiana reported a hacking incident involving ARM that reportedly occurred on August 9 – – months after the May intrusion and one month following Kroll’s report. The August incident reportedly affected 506 of Ashley’s benefits plan enrollees.
ARM’s breach resources do not reflect any additional incidents.
Neither ARM nor Ashley Industrial Molding responded to phone messages requesting information about this incident report, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about whether this really is another incident, and if so, were data actually accessed or acquired this time.
Update of October 13: I’m beginning to suspect the date of the incident was a typo on HHS’s part as there’s been yet another report – this one from Gypsum Management and Supply – also listing AssureCare that mentions the May 9th date.