Clay County Hospital in Flora, Ill., has received an anonymous email blackmail threat threatening to release some patient data unless the email sender receives a "substantial payment from the hospital," according to a news release.
The hospital notified law enforcement, launched an investigation to determine the source and scope of the threat and notified all affected patients.
The compromised data pertains to patients who visited a Clay County Hospital clinic on or before February 2012 and includes patient names, addresses, Social Security numbers and birth dates. No medical information has been accessed, according to the release.
A CIO report indicates the hospital is not disclosing how many people are involved in the data breach, but it does not believe the data has been released so far.
The forensic investigation also determined that hospital servers have not been hacked and remain secure.
Clay County Hospital plans to implement extra internal security measures to prevent future incidences like this, including additional logging systems and auditing features to track and control data access.
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