From their notification:
Illinois Gastroenterology Group, PLLC (“IGG”) is providing notice of a recent incident that may affect the security of certain individuals’ information.
On October 22, 2021, IGG discovered unusual activity within its computer network. IGG immediately launched an investigation, with the assistance of third-party cybersecurity specialists, to determine the nature and scope of the event. On November 18, 2021, the investigation determined that an unauthorized actor gained access to certain IGG systems and that information contained in those systems may have been viewed or taken by the unauthorized actor.
IGG reviewed the information contained within the systems to identify if any individuals’ personal information or protected health information was potentially impacted. On March 22, 2022, IGG determined personal information of individuals including the following types of information that IGG maintains in its systems and that were, or may have been, impacted by this incident include: name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license, Passport, financial account information, payment card information, employer-assigned identification number, medical information, and biometric data. To date, IGG has not received any reports of fraudulent misuse of any information potentially impacted.
IGG provided a lot more detail on their improvements/responses to harden security than we usually see in notifications. Specifically, they write:
In response to this incident, IGG augmented its policies and procedures addressing network security. IGG accelerated the implementation of an enhanced managed Security Operations Center including the deployment of an endpoint detection and response platform in response to this event with policies enabled specially for ransomware. IGG immediately reset passwords and employees with privileged access to sensitive systems were enrolled into our multifactor authentication platform. IGG is also notifying potentially affected individuals so that they may take further steps to protect their information, should they feel it is appropriate to do so.
You can read the full notification at PRNewswire.
In 2019, IGG reported a hacking incident involving email that impacted 1,481 patients. Whether that attack shared any common vulnerability or vulnerabilities with the recent attack is unknown to DataBreaches.net. The entry on HHS’s public breach tool for the 2019 report from IGG does not have any summary that would indicate that any investigation had occurred and/or had been completed by now.
Updated May 6, 2022: This incident was submitted to HHS’s public breach tool on April 22, although it did not appear immediately. The number of patients impacted was reported as 227,943