LabCorp hacked causing millions of customers to face personal information disclosure
The Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (usually known as LabCorp) is an independent clinical laboratory and the largest independent medical laboratory in the United States, based in Burlington, North Carolina, one of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States.
Industry insiders point out that LabCorp is one of the largest independent medical laboratories in the United States, with a record of millions of customers. As described on their website – LabCorp provides diagnostic, drug development and technical solutions for more than 115 million patients annually. The weekly blood samples of patients typically exceed 2.5 million and support approximately 100 countries. Clinical trial activities.
In addition to covering the United States, LabCorp also operates in countries such as Belgium, the United Kingdom and Canada. In addition to routine clinical testing, it also provides sophisticated testing services, including cancer, HIV genotype and phenotype, and genetic diagnosis. LabCorp’s primary customers include doctors, hospitals, managed care organisations, government agencies, pharmaceutical companies and other independent clinical laboratories.
According to the Daily Mail report, LabCorp suffered a cyber attack last weekend, and there may be data leakage. Although the investigation is still in progress, the authorities said that LabCorp’s network system was indeed invaded by anonymous hackers last weekend, and the purpose of the invasion is likely to be to obtain medical data.
In a statement issued by LabCorp, the company said: “During the weekend of July 14, 2018, LabCorp detected suspicious activity on its information technology network. LabCorp immediately took certain systems offline as part of its comprehensive response to contain the activity. This temporarily affected test processing and customer access to test results on or over the weekend.“
So far, LabCorp has not announced further details related to the incident but insists that there is no evidence that the data has been unauthorizedly transferred and abused. A spokesman for LabCorp said that the company’s technical experts are working hard to restore offline systems and functions, and it is expected that some of the suspended services will fully restore in a few days.
This information and data are enormous, and if a data breach occurs, the number of affected patients may be unprecedented.
