Ashland, Mo.-based Namaste Health Care notified 1,600 patients its office experienced a cyberattack in August, reports News Tribune.
Officials believe an unknown cyberattacker gained remote access to the clinic's computer systems and file server during the weekend of Aug. 12-13. The clinic does not have any evidence the attacker accessed or viewed information, but the attacker launched a ransomware virus on the file share server, which encrypted its data as of Aug. 14.
After learning of the incident, officials disabled the user's access and took its computer systems offline. The clinic paid the attacker's ransom to obtain a decryption key and restore the data. Officials have not been able to definitively conclude whether the hacker accessed and viewed the data.
Namaste identified patients who made an appointment on or prior to Aug. 14 as those potentially impacted — their name, address, date of birth, social security number, medical record number, health insurance information and information relating to the reason for their visits may have been exposed.
AllClear ID, a credit monitoring service, mailed letters to these individuals on Namaste's behalf Oct. 13. The clinic will also provide them one free year of AllClear's services.
Editiors Note: This article was updated on Oct. 18, 2017 at 9:23 a.m.
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