On August 16, 2018, InterAct of Michigan submitted a HIPAA Email Breach to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, InterAct of Michigan’s email breach affected 1,290 individuals’ protected health information. InterAct of Michigan is classified as a Healthcare Provider.
According to InterAct of Michigan’s statement:
On June 8, 2018, InterAct of Michigan, Inc. (“InterAct”) became aware that an unauthorized third party obtained access to an InterAct e-mail account.
On July 30, 2018, InterAct determined that the e-mail account contained certain of its clients’ personal information including those clients’ names and Social Security numbers, and, in some instances, dates of birth, treatment history, and prescription information.
Upon learning of the incident, InterAct promptly launched an internal investigation and terminated the account credentials.
InterAct also retained a leading forensic security firm to assist in our investigation. Additionally, InterAct has already taken measures to help prevent this type of incident from occurring in the future, including creating a rule to disable forwarding to any external e-mail addresses, reviewing logs on a weekly basis in order to identity any suspicious logins and weekly monitoring of accounts for single user inbox rules.
On August 7, 2018, InterAct sent written notification to all potentially impacted individuals for whom we have contact information, and have arranged for complimentary identity theft protection services. …InterAct apologizes for any inconvenience or concern that this incident might cause the affected individuals.
HHS Wall of Shame
The HHS Wall of Shame is a website under the jurisdiction of HHS that lists all HIPAA breaches reported within the last 24 months. The Wall of Shame displays breaches currently under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights. As part of section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act, the HHS Secretary must post a list of breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals.
HIPAA Breach Report
The Paubox HIPAA Breach Report analyzes breaches that affected 500 or more individuals as reported in the HHS Wall of Shame.
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