{"id":1477,"date":"2025-07-20T11:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T11:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/2025\/07\/20\/over-5-4-million-affected-in-healthcare-data-breach-at-episource\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T11:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T11:57:11","slug":"over-5-4-million-affected-in-healthcare-data-breach-at-episource","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/2025\/07\/20\/over-5-4-million-affected-in-healthcare-data-breach-at-episource\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 5.4 Million Affected in Healthcare Data Breach at Episource"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"cphContent_pnlArticleBody\" data-layout-id=\"2\" data-edit-folder-name=\"text\" data-index=\"0\">\n<p>A data breach at medical billing company Episource has exposed the personal and health information of more than 5.4 million people across the US.<\/p>\n<p>The breach, discovered on February 6\u00a02025, allowed cybercriminals to access and copy files containing sensitive data. An internal investigation found that the attackers were inside the company\u2019s systems for about 10 days, between January 27 and February 6. Episource temporarily shut down its systems to prevent further intrusion and notified law enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>The compromised data varies by individual but includes names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. In many cases, the breach also involved Social Security numbers, dates of birth, insurance policy details, Medicaid and Medicare details, and protected health information (PHI) such as diagnoses, medications, test results and records of medical treatment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis breach signals that threat actors are shifting their focus from hospitals and clinics to third-party providers, because this approach allows them to get access to massive amounts of PHI at a time,\u201d said Piyush Pandey, CEO at Pathlock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce adversaries get their hands on this data, they can misuse it for many years ahead for highly personalized scams and blackmail campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Read more on third-party risk in healthcare cybersecurity: Debt Collector Data Breach Affects 200,000 Harbin Clinic Patients<\/em><\/p>\n<p>According to Episource, the following types of data have been potentially compromised:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Full name, phone number, email\u00a0and physical address<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Date of birth and, in some cases, Social Security number<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Health insurance details, including members and policy numbers<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Medical data, including diagnoses, prescriptions\u00a0and imaging<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Medicaid and Medicare identification numbers<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Episource, owned by Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, provides coding and risk adjustment services to insurers, doctors\u00a0and hospitals.<\/p>\n<p>Sharp Healthcare, one of Episource\u2019s partners, confirmed the breach was caused by ransomware.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis incident once again highlights the necessity of preventing unauthorized lateral movement within one\u2019s network,\u201d said Guru Gurushankar, SVP at ColorTokens.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOrganizations have to become breach-ready \u2013 this is essential to survival.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Commenting on the news, James Maude, field CTO at BeyondTrust, emphasized: \u201cEvery device and external connection in this ecosystem represents a potential entry point for attackers. This toxic combination of vulnerabilities and access is a prime example of why healthcare has become such attractive targets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To reduce risk, Episource is offering free identity protection and credit monitoring. However, the breach has sparked broader concern.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA breach of this scale drives compliance risks and more stringent regulatory scrutiny for every entity in the healthcare supply chain,\u201d Pandey noted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy implementing a privileged remote access strategy, we can eliminate those common entry points for infection, build cyber-resilience and focus on patient health,\u201d added Maude.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A data breach at medical billing company Episource has exposed the personal and health information of more than 5.4 million people across the US. The breach, discovered on February 6\u00a02025, allowed cybercriminals to access and copy files containing sensitive data. An internal investigation found that the attackers were inside the company\u2019s systems for about 10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"morenews-featured":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b.jpg",300,300,false],"crawlomatic_preview_image":["https:\/\/ft365.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1477-5563c997-7c5f-41c6-adf1-237189bc561b-146x146.jpg",146,146,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"henry","author_link":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/author\/henry\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/category\/uncategorized\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Uncategorized<\/a>","tag_info":"Uncategorized","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ft365.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}