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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2019
State data breach exposes personal health information
By AUBREY WIEBER
Oregon Capital Bureau
The Oregon Depart-
ment of Human Services
on Thursday disclosed that
millions of agency emails
had been breached in Jan-
uary, potentially exposing
the personal medical infor-
mation of hundreds of thou-
sands of people.
The agency said it dis-
covered the data breach
involving 2 million emails
on Jan. 8 and by Jan. 28
realized the emails included
personal medical informa-
tion protected under Health
Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act, known
as HIPAA.
The agency hasn’t con-
fi rmed that any informa-
tion was actually taken, but
the hackers gained access to
the emails. Agency offi cials
couldn’t readily explain
why the public was being
alerted two months later.
Robert Oakes, a depart-
ment spokesman, said the
agency found there was
the potential for the breach
to impact at least 350,000
people .
Oregon’s Identity Theft
Protection Act requires
agencies to alert the public
when there is potential to
cross that 350,000 thresh-
old. A more specifi c number
should be available in about
two weeks, Oakes said.
When asked why the
Information at the state Department of Human Services was exposed in a data breach.
public wasn’t notifi ed in
January, he said it took time
to go through the large num-
ber of emails to fi gure out
what was exposed. When
asked what happened in the
two months since the dis-
covery of the breach, Oakes
declined to elaborate, say-
ing, “It just took time.”
“We want to make it
publicly available out of
an abundance of caution,”
Oakes said.
The delay in informing
the public, and the breach
itself, caught the atten-
tion of Republicans in the
Capitol long critical of
the Department of Human
Services .
“Nearly two months
passed
before
DHS
revealed that its system
had been compromised,
exposing S ocial S ecurity
numbers, birth dates and
additional personal infor-
mation,” House Republi-
can spokesman Greg Stiles
said in a news release. “This
risks identity theft and other
criminal exploitation of this
data.”
The phishing scheme
gained the perpetrators
access to email records
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that included health infor-
mation . Oakes said there
weren’t specifi c fi les tar-
geted, but some of the com-
promised emails included
spreadsheets with personal
information.
Oakes said the agency
provides services to 1.6
million people, and the data
breach could impact anyone
from those involved in the
foster care system, to those
receiving food assistance to
the elderly or disabled.
Among the information
compromised was S ocial
S ecurity numbers and dates
of birth, Oakes said.
The agency has hired an
outside fi rm, IDExperts, to
review the issue and con-
fi rm the number of people
exposed in the breach and
what information was com-
promised. That work will
cost the state $480,000.
According to the news
release, nine department
employees opened a spam
email which appeared to be
from a government account.
It asked recipients to click
a link and log in with their
email and password. That
gave the hacker access to
those nine accounts.
Oakes said the nine
employees were spread
throughout the agency. He
didn’t know how many
total employees received
the email, but said it was
“extensive.”
Oakes said all 8,500
department
employees
have to go through train-
ing to protect against secu-
rity risks , which tells them
to avoid anything question-
able and provides resources
they can seek if they fear an
email could be a scheme.
But this one was sophisti-
cated, he said.
“It looked like some-
thing, depending on your
role, that you would do
through the normal course
of business,” Oakes said.
Those nine email boxes
contained nearly 2 million
emails. The nine accounts
were frozen on Jan. 8 as
state experts worked to
understand the issue, Oakes
said.
The outside fi rm is now
working to directly identify
people whose information
was exposed. It will then
contact those people and
inform them on how to pro-
tect themselves.
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