Harvard Pilgrim Health Care said the number of people affected by a ransomware attack last spring is bigger than initially expected.
The New England Health Insurance Company was attacked by an as-yet-unidentified ransomware gang on April 17, 2023, limiting service for several days. The company has submitted several violation notification letters to Maine regulators since the incident, the latest being increase the number to 2,860,795, an increase of about 12 percent from the initial total.
This is the latest example of how the number of people affected by data breaches can increase as incident investigations evolve. A cyberattack on T-Mobile in 2021 was originally thought to have affected approximately 50 million people in the United States, but this figure was later released. revised to 76.6 million.
A similar incident occurred last year, when hackers attacked a popular file transfer tool used by dozens of governments and businesses. The Government of Nova Scotia was forced to broaden its warnings after realizing that more people were affected than previously thought.
The attackers were located in Harvard Pilgrim systems from March 28, 2023 to April 17, 2023. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care worked with federal law enforcement and cybersecurity companies to resolve the incident.
Harvard Pilgrim said the files involved may contain personal data and protected health information about current and former subscribers and dependents, as well as current contracted providers. The nonprofit organization serves more than 1.1 million members who reside primarily in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut.
The company’s parent company, Point32Health, was formed in 2021 through the merger of Harvard Pilgrim and Tufts Health Plan, serving more than 2.2 million people in total. The company is Massachusetts’ second-largest insurer, and the state’s former governor, Charlie Baker, served as CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care for a decade.
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