Quest Diagnostics confirms breach of system used by 500,000 clinicians
The lab testing giant says patient records were stolen from its Quanum platform, though it has not released a specific count of affected individuals.
By Yasmin Duda ·
Quest Diagnostics confirmed on Thursday that hackers accessed patient data through its Quanum lab ordering system.
The company disclosed the incident in a mandatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Quest stated it became aware of the attack on Wednesday. Quanum serves as the digital hub for doctors' offices, hospitals, and other healthcare practices. They use it to order lab tests and process billing. The platform holds extensive patient health records, diagnostic results, and financial data.
In a separate security notice, the company admitted that protected health information was taken. This includes personal details and medical records. Quest is still determining exactly which types of data were stolen. The company has notified law enforcement and is currently investigating the breach. A spokesperson for Quest, Amanda Rivera, directed media inquiries to the company's website notice rather than answering questions directly.
The scope of the breach is difficult to gauge because Quest has not released a specific number of affected patients or healthcare customers. The company also has not stated when the initial intrusion occurred or if hackers have made ransom demands. The notice on Quest's website currently contains a technical code that prevents search engines from indexing the page, making it harder for patients to find the information.
The potential impact is large given the platform's reach. Quest states that approximately 500,000 clinicians use Quanum across thousands of locations in North America. While the total number of stored records is unclear, a case study on the company's website notes that a single health system can hold hundreds of millions of medical documents for more than 6 million patients.
This incident marks the second major data breach for Quest in ten years. In 2019, a cyberattack on a third-party billing partner resulted in the loss of 11.9 million patient records. The current attack is part of a series of major cybersecurity failures in the healthcare sector this year.
Other recent incidents include a mass device wipe at Stryker in March and a weeks-long network outage at Boston Scientific in August. Large patient data breaches also occurred at CareCloud, Craneware, and McKesson this year.
Source: TechCrunch
