Diligent Corp is a software as a service company, headquartered in New York. In June, 2022, they disclosed an incident that occurred in May. According to their disclosure at the time, on or around May 21, 2022, an unauthorized actor accessed a network supporting Steele Compliance (a firm acquired by Diligent in February 2021). Diligent discovered the breach on May 23 and contained the event by May 24.
In a report submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office in June, they reported that 1184 people were affected and offered credit monitoring services for 24 months. The information accessed without authorization included name, email address, mailing address, or Social Security number.
When you discover the scope is bigger than you knew
But if Diligent notified everyone affected in June 2022, why didn’t the University of Colorado Hospital Authority issue any notice until January 17 of this year to 48,879 patients reportedly affected by the incident? In a notice on their website, UCHealth writes, “Some of UCHealth’s patient, provider or employee data may have been included in this incident.”
The explanation for the delay is that Diligent discovered more entities had been affected than they had originally determined, and they discovered it the hard way.
On February 2, Diligent submitted a notification to state attorneys general similar in content to the June 2022 notice but with a preface added that states, “We recently learned that additional individuals’ personal information was involved.”
The updated notification explains:
Diligent recently learned the precise scope of the unauthorized third party’s access, when the third party posted a set of files that it had acquired on an external site. That access appears to have included access to personal data we did not initially believe was accessed, including some data regarding you. We are informing you so that you may take precautionary measures.
Although UCHealth has reported the incident to HHS, there is no report directly to HHS from Diligent that provides any other numbers of patients who might have been affected.
This post may be updated as more information becomes available.