On November 17, Proliance Surgeons notified HHS that 437,392 patients were affected by a breach. An undated notice on their website explains that it was a ransomware attack in which files and systems were encrypted and some data was exfiltrated.
“After a thorough forensic investigation, we discovered on May 24, 2023, that additional files may have contained personal information, and may have been accessed by an unauthorized party on or around February 11, 2023, however, we had not yet identified the specific individuals involved. We subsequently conducted a detailed and comprehensive review of all the data involved, identified the specific individuals whose information may have been accessed or acquired, and took steps to immediately notify potentially affected individuals of the incident. The information involved includes individual names, and one or more of the following: date of birth, Social Security number, medical treatment information, health insurance information, phone number, email address, financial account number, driver license or other identification information, and usernames and passwords. We are notifying affected individuals about the incident via letter,” they wrote.
Their full notification can be found on their website. Unfortunately, it leaves a number of questions unanswered.
DataBreaches sent an email to Proliance Surgeons with the following preliminary questions:
1. When did the attack occur?
2. When did Proliance first discover that it was the victim of a cyberattack?
3. Did Proliance have current and usable backups to restore from?
4. Did Proliance negotiate with, or interact with, the threat actors at all?
5. What group or threat actor was responsible for this attack?
6. Has any data from this attack shown up on the dark web or clear net?
No reply has been received as yet, but DataBreaches will update this post when a reply is received. Proliance Surgeons are independent specialists and surgeons who own their own centers. There are more than 400 providers and more than 100 locations in the Washington area. Their notification does not indicate that only one center or so was affected, so it seems like there is a central network for all locations, which raises other questions.
As far as DataBreaches could determine, this incident has not shown up on any of the dark web ransomware leak sites. If the incident was in February or earlier, that could indicate that Proliance had paid the attackers, but there are other possible explanations and it would be best if Proliance issued an unequivocally clear statement about whether they paid ransom or not.