Change Healthcare cyberattack being investigated by federal civil rights investigators
The investigators will assess whether Change Healthcare adhered to data privacy laws when safeguarding patient data.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigators are investigating whether protected health information was exposed in the recent cyberattack on Change Healthcare.
The Office for Civil Rights Director Melanie Fontes Rainer, in a letter, stated that spurred by the ‘unprecedented magnitude’ of the attack, they will be examining whether Change Healthcare followed the data privacy laws in protecting patient data. Spokesman Eric Hausman from UnitedHealth Group, which operates Change Healthcare has assured that they will be working with law enforcement to investigate the extent of the attacks.
Change Healthcare, a major payment exchange system in the US healthcare network suffered an outage in February due to a cyberattack. The cyberattack was claimed by the BlackCat ransomware group. Change Healthcare has since noted that 99% of its payment systems are back online.
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