OnePoint Patient Care, an Arizona-based hospice pharmacy serving over 40,000 patients per day, has informed customers about a data breach impacting personal information.
OnePoint said it first detected suspicious activity on its network in early August.
A later investigation revealed that by this point, the attackers had already obtained files containing personal information from the pharmacy’s systems, including names, residence information, medical records, and prescription and diagnosis information.
OPPC told the US Department of Health and Human Services that the data breach impacted over 795,000 people.
Inc Ransomware, an extortion operation that first emerged last summer, has taken credit for the attack, listing the company on its Tor-based leak website.
According to cyber firm Sentinel One, the ransomware group believes it is doing its victims a favour by positioning itself as a service to those who have stolen their data.
Victims are encouraged to pay the ransom to ‘save their reputation’; in return, the criminals promise to reveal their methods, like ethical hackers, making the victim’s environment ‘more secure’.
Anatomy of a ransomware attack: how hackers break into hospitals
If breached companies fail to comply with the hackers’ demands, the data is leaked online, as with OnePoint Patient Care.
Inc Ransomware is known to target multiple industries with little to no discrimination. This includes attacks on healthcare, education, and government entities.
According to Akhil Mittal, senior security consulting manager at Black Duck, this cyberattack shows a growing weakness in healthcare’s cyber defences. This problem has worsened in recent years due to outdated systems and the high value of medical records on the black market.
“Affected individuals should quickly check their financial and medical records for any unusual activity, set up fraud alerts, and use any identity theft protections offered by OPPC,” he advised.
“The company’s security team should focus on analysing the breach, improving data encryption, and tightening access to sensitive information.
“More broadly, healthcare organisations should invest in initiative-taking security measures like Zero Trust models and AI-driven threat detection to protect patient trust and secure data. This breach reminds us that protecting patient data is key to keeping trust in healthcare,” he said.
