Health First, a nonprofit community health system comprising four hospitals in Brevard County, Fla., is notifying 42,000 patients to a potential compromise of their personal information, Florida Today reports.
Here are four things to know:
1. No medical information was included in the breach, but some customers' Social Security numbers, as well as addresses and birthdates, may have been accessed by an unauthorized user.
2. The breach happened between February and May after some employees received phishing emails that enabled hackers to advance their phishing scheme.
3. "Based on a forensic review, it is believed that a limited number of emails were viewed, and the criminals did not appear interested in obtaining personal data, but focused on continuing their phishing scam," Matthew Gerrell, senior vice president of consumer and retail services at Health First, told Florida Today. "However, as some accounts contained protected health information we have notified the potential impacted customers."
4. After discovering the incident, Health First said it immediately blocked the unauthorized access and changed the affected employees' email account passwords.