A health care group in Massachusetts, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, announced a data breach. The breach occurred after employees at the hospitals received phishing emails in November 2014.
When employees clicked on the fraudulent emails, they were directed to a website infected with malware. The hackers were able to get access to email accounts of certain employees in the Partners HealthCare network.
Partners HealthCare informed the impacted patients of the breach in April. Patient information, including names, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers and in certain circumstances, Social Security numbers were compromised. For more information, Partners HealthCare System released a statement on their website. It can be accessed here.