Kaiser Health Conglomerate Announces Data Breach Affecting Millions of Members; One of the Largest in U.S. History
In a shocking turn of events, Kaiser, one of the largest U.S. health conglomerates, recently notified millions of its members of a data breach that occurred earlier this month. The notice filed with the U.S. government on April 12 and made public on Thursday revealed that 13.4 million residents had their information compromised in the breach. The notice did not provide specific details about the nature of the breach, stating only that there was “unauthorized access/disclosure” involving a network server.
Under HIPAA regulations, organizations in the U.S. must report data breaches involving protected health information to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Kaiser also informed California’s attorney general about the breach but offered no further information about it. The parent organization of various entities within Kaiser Permanente reported having 12.5 million members at the end of 2024.
The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan has been identified as having experienced one of the largest health-related data breaches to date in 2024 by DHHS’s website, surpassing even those seen during previous years like Change Healthcare’s ransomware attack earlier this year in February, which affected sensitive health information for “a substantial proportion” of people in America but an exact number was not provided by UnitedHealth Group, Change Healthcare’s parent company disclosed earlier this week when they stated that their customers’ personal health information was stolen by hackers who carried out a ransomware attack on their network systems from February 8th to March 1st resulting in exposure to sensitive information pertaining to over 56 million patients across America including names, dates of birth, social security numbers and other private medical records among others.[It is unclear if there is any connection between these two incidents.]
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