Maine General Health

On November 13, 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informed the covered entity (CE), Maine General Health, that during an ongoing criminal investigation it discovered the CE’s data on an online Russian message board. Certain devices storing the CE’s data were infected during internet-browsing activity from one of the CE’s workstations, allowing an intruder to remotely scan the CE’s network, obtain credentials, and thereafter access the CE’s computer servers and workstations containing the protected health information (PHI) of approximately 120,247 individuals. The types of PHI involved in the incident included patients’ names, demographic information, dates of birth, diagnoses, treatments received, medical record numbers, and in some instances, health insurance identification numbers. The CE provided breach notification to HHS, affected individuals, and the media. In response to the incident, the CE improved technical and administrative safeguards, including updating passwords, disabling infrequently used domain administrator accounts, reconfiguring firewalls, updating access control lists, installing a secondary web filtering appliance, implementing tighter application controls, implementing additional restrictions on viewing/clicking on advertisements, and reducing access to its virtual network. OCR obtained assurances that the CE implemented the corrective actions listed here.