Whenever a data breach takes place involving an entity you are involved with, you should know all the details, particularly involving what data points were compromised in the incident.

Depending on the data that was exposed, your next course of action will vary. Perhaps it will be as simple as changing your password, or it may involve more long-term moves, such as filing a credit freeze or fraud alert on your accounts and monitoring them for fraudulent activity.

In this week’s installment of the BlackCloak Thursday Threat Update, we’ll cover a pair of data breaches where different sets of data points were exposed.

 

Shield Health Care Group data breach affects 2.3 million

What we know: New England-based Shields Health Care Group experienced a data breach affecting more than 2.3 million patients. An investigation found unauthorized individuals accessed confidential patient information from March 7 to March 21, 2022. Compromised information included patients’ full names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and various pieces of medical data.

Recommendations: In its notice on the breach, Shields recommends affected patients place a credit freeze and fraud alerts on their accounts, especially due to the sensitive nature of the data exposed in the incident. Additionally, if anyone has questions or concerns regarding the incident, Shields has set up an assistance line for patients to call. Patients can call 855-503-3386 from Monday to Friday, 9:00AM to 6:30PM EST.

 

American Bar Association breach impacts 1.4 million members

What we know: The American Bar Association discovered an unauthorized party was able to access its systems. The ABA found 1.4 million members were affected by the incident after an unauthorized third party gained access to the ABA network beginning on or about March 6, 2023 and may have acquired certain information.” The ABA added its investigation found old usernames and hashed and salted passwords were compromised in the breach.

Recommendations: Even if you are not among the 1.4 million members affected by the incident, all ABA members should change their passwords out of an abundance of caution. If you use your ABA password for other services, make sure to change those as well. It’s important to ensure all passwords you create are strong and unique. Reusing passwords puts all of your online accounts at risk should one of them get caught up in a breach.

 

Take action, whether a breach occurs or not

When you become a victim of a data breach, it’s important to take immediate action to mitigate any potential damage you may face. But you don’t have to wait for a breach to occur to take action. There are steps you can take right now to limit the amount of risk you face in the ever-evolving digital world.

Learn how to place a credit freeze and fraud alert on your accounts, and why you should create strong, unique passwords for every single service you use.