Major Healthcare Data Breach Exposes 1.6 Million People

Laboratory Services Cooperative (LSC) released a statement on April 10th informing all of its customers that the company suffered a data breach that impacted 1.6 million people.

The lab testing provider noticed suspicious activity within its network on October 27th, 2024. The company involved third-party experts to understand what happened, and in February, LSC received the initial results.

The incident may have impacted the Planned Parenthood centers that received lab testing services from LSC. You can find a full list of these centers on LSC’s FAQ.

Although the report states that the information stolen depends on the person’s relation with the company, it contains extremely sensitive patient and work-related data, falling within the following categories:

• 💳 Personal identifiers: Names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, Social Security Number, driver’s license or state ID number, passport number, date of birth, demographic data, student ID number, and other government identifiers.
• ⚕️ Medical/clinical information: date(s) of service, diagnoses, treatment, medical record number, lab results, patient/accession number, provider name, treatment location, and related-care details.
• 🛡️ Health insurance information: Plan name, plan type, insurance companies, and member/group ID numbers.
• 💰 Billing, claims, and payment data: Claim numbers, billing details, bank account details, billing codes, payment card details, balance details, and similar banking and financial information.

As a response, LSC has hired third-party cybersecurity experts to continuously monitor the dark web. At the time of writing this article, nothing has been found yet. Additionally, the company is offering all victims free credit card monitoring and medical identity protection.

LCS also claims to have taken all the necessary steps to secure its environment and prevent further data breaches.

Data breaches are at an all-time high this year. Even if you were able to escape the LSC data breach unscathed, we highly recommend investing in an identity theft protection service, a credit card monitoring tool, and dark web monitoring.

This way, if any other business with your information gets hacked, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to know in time to take all the preventive actions required.