On March 28, the Hive ransomware group managed to penetrate the IT systems of FIRST CHOICE COMMUNITY HEALTHCARE (FCCH), a non-profit healthcare system headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by exfiltrating personal data of patients and hospital staff.
The announcement, later removed, appeared for the first time on the pages of the cybercriminals’ blog on April 7 and DataBreaches.net dealt with the story in an article published the same day “Five ransomware groups, five victims … will it ever ease up?”
On August 1st, the FCCH publishes a press release on the homepage of its website providing information about the cyber attack on its IT systems, describing it with the generic term “security incident”
In the press release, no reference is ever made to a ransomware-type cyber attack, the actual theft of data from the servers of one’s IT system is never admitted, as well as does not give for certain the theft of personal and protected health information of one’s patients and health workers.
DataBreaches.net sent a further request for clarification to First Choice Community Healthcare, but even in this case the non-profit organization responded without clarifying the facts by evading the questions.
Source and cover image by: DataBreaches.net