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Delta County Memorial Hospital District reveals more about 2024 cyberattack that affected 148,363 people

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Dissent

Delta County Memorial Hospital District (Delta Health) in Colorado was the victim of a cyberattack at the end of May 2024. Whatever happened — and the details still haven’t been disclosed — resulted in the provider notifying HHS on July 29 that it had suffered a breach, but the number was not yet known. The “501” placeholder report has remained on HHS’s breach tool since last July. All we knew was that it was some kind of hacking or IT incident and that no business associate was involved.

But now Delta Health has filed a notification with the Maine Attorney General’s Office and a website notice that both provide some details, although they somewhat contradict each other. In their submission to Maine,  the provider’s external counsel indicates that the breach occurred on May 27, 2024 and was discovered on January 1, 2025. That is not when Delta Health really discovered the breach and DataBreaches wishes law firms would start reporting discovery dates using HIPAA’s definition of when a breach is “discovered.”

The sample notification letter, appended to the submission, provides some additional details and contradicts their external counsel’s submission to Maine about the date of discovery. According to that template letter, Delta Health detected suspicious activity on May 30, 2024, and by November 1, 2024, had determined that the information involved included “name, date of birth, phone number, address, financial account information, medical information, health insurance information, Social Security number, and/or driver’s license number.”

That statement is somewhat inconsistent with the notice posted on Delta Health’s site on January 30, 2025. In that notice, they also state the date of detection as May 30, but then report:

On July 29, 2024, we began mailing written notifications to individuals whose personal information was involved in the incident and for whom we have a valid mailing address. We finished mailing these written notifications on or about January 31, 2025.

So Delta Health complied with HIPAA’s notification requirement of notification no later than 60 calendar days from discovery, but not everyone was notified until January 31. They do not explain why it took so long to notify everyone.

Delta Health’s letter does not clarify whether this was a hack with an extortion demand, a hack without any extortion demand,  or an attack that involved encryption of files.  No ransomware group has ever claimed responsibility for the attack. Delta Health states that they have no evidence that any information has been misused, but they do not state whether they have scoured the dark web and whether any data has been leaked or not.

According to their submission to Maine, a total of 148,363 people were affected by the breach.

A check of HHS’s public breach tool does not show any update, and the 501 placeholder still appears. HHS’s breach tool does not show that any investigation has been closed, so this may still be under investigation by HHS.

Category: Commentaries and AnalysesHackHealth Data

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