Healthcare Breach Exposes Details for 24,000

Medical information for at least 24,000 people in the state of Utah was recently exposed in a massive data breach suffered by the Utah department of Technology Services.

The breach, which seems to have taken place on March 30, affected a server that contains DTS Medicaid claims, according to a report from the Utah Department of Health. It is not yet clear exactly what information was exposed in the incident, but DTS reported that claims stored on the server typically include a client's name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, physician name, healthcare provider detail, tax ID number, and codes for billing purposes.

The breach was caused by hackers, believed to be operating out of Eastern Europe, who got around the server's security system, the report said. The affected server has been shut down and DTS has beefed up security on its other systems.

Ondrej Krehel, the chief information security officer for Identity Theft 911, writes a regular blog about the ways hackers can cause data breaches and what both organizations and consumers can do to make sure they're not hit by these attacks.