"Change Healthcare to Start Notifying Customers Who Had Data Exposed in Cyberattack"
Change Healthcare just started to notify hospitals, insurers, and other customers that they may have had patient information exposed in a massive cyberattack. The company also said that it expects to begin notifying individuals or patients in late July. Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group provides technology used to submit and process billions of insurance claims a year. Hackers gained access to its system in February and unleashed a ransomware attack that encrypted and froze large parts of it. Change Healthcare says names, addresses, health insurance information, and personal information, such as Social Security numbers, may have been exposed in the attack. The company is still investigating. The company says that it has reviewed more than 90% of impacted files and has seen no signs that doctors’ charts or full medical histories were taken. After the attack, UnitedHealth paid a $22 million ransom in Bitcoin.