Another major health facility was attacked, affecting nearly half of the Canadian population

Considering the general situation in the world, it is not difficult to recognize that organizations operating in the field of health - healthcare are increasingly becoming victims of cybercrime. LifeLabs, one of Canada's largest clinical screening and record management companies, has become the latest name to appear in the list of health facilities visited by hackers in 2019.

In an emergency notice issued on December 18, LifeLabs admitted it was experiencing a cyber security disaster, affecting more than 15 million customer profiles (equivalent to 50% of the Canadian population). , and many of them are available for sale on the dark web as well as by anonymous visitors.

Everything seems to be out of control of LifeLabs and the company is now calling for help from international security organizations. According to the latest announcement, LifeLabs said that hackers may have gained access to their name, address, email, login information, password, date of birth, health card number, and special features. Especially the test results as well as the medical records of the reservoirs are afraid of leaking, this number is estimated to be no less than 85,000. The majority of customer information is exposed in central Ontario and British Columbia.

Remarkably, in its notice, LifeLabs mentioned that one of the necessary measures to protect customer records is "data redemption." This makes observers suspect this is a ransomware attack, although LifeLabs did not mention it in the press release.

To alleviate the situation, LifeLabs is currently offering customers three packages of in-depth security services at no cost: Dark Web Monitoring, Identity theft insurance, and TransUnion credit monitoring alerts. However, these are only temporary measures, the company must ensure that customer data is retrieved as soon as possible.

LifeLabs said it paid a hacker money to recover stolen data, and collaborated with major cyber security organizations to identify the affected area and take steps to ensure the system's security. Computer systems of the company.