An intruder had accessed internal membership information of more than 151,000 patients of an Advantage Dental, a Redmond-based provider that serves low-income patients at more than 30 clinics in Oregon, in late February, announced on Monday.
According to the Advantage Dental, there is unauthorized access to patients’ names, social security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, but treatment details, payment or other financial data were not accessed.
A malware obtained a username and password of Advantage employee’s computer that allows access to the membership database, which is separate from the database that contains financial and treatment information.
An intruder accessed the information continuously for three days from 23 Feb to 26 Feb. Internal IT specialists of Advantage Dental terminated the illegal access immediately upon discovery. Computers equipped with anti-virus software fails to detect new variations of a virus.
No patients have complained about the data being used for criminal activity. Advantage has made necessary security changes in all its clinics, and headquarters in Redmond to avoid further data breach.
