Healthcare giant Henry Schein reveals data breach following major ransomware attack

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A year after the incidents, Henry Schein reports more details to authorities

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American healthcare giant Henry Schein has finally reported suffering ransomware attacks to the US government, almost a year after the incidents took place.

The company has filed a data breach notification with the Office of the Maine Attorney General detailing the attacks in October 2024 by the now-defunct BlackCat (AKA ALPHV) ransomware operation, which broke into its systems and stole 35TB of sensitive company data.

The details about the nature of the stolen files were not disclosed, so we don’t know if they include payment information, banking data, or more.

Identity theft

The company allegedly tried to negotiate with the crooks to have the files deleted, but the negotiations broke down. This resulted in the second break-in, by the same threat actor, approximately a month later. After that, the crooks started leaking the information stolen in the attack, and threatened to encrypt the systems for the third time. We don’t know if that ever happened, since only a portion of the data was allegedly leaked.

Now, in the data breach notification, Henry Schein confirmed that the number of affected individuals is 166,432.

“Please be assured that, upon discovery of the incident, our cybersecurity team immediately took a series of steps, including taking certain systems offline and other steps intended to contain the incident, hiring cybersecurity experts, conducting an investigation to identify and remove any malicious files and determine company systems that were impacted, and seeking to implement measures to fortify our defenses going forward,” the company said in its announcement.

It is now offering affected individuals identity theft detection and resolution tools through Experian, for a period of two years.

Henry Schein is a Fortune 500 company and one of the global leaders in its industry, providing healthcare solutions, as well as the distribution of medical, dental, and veterinary supplies. It supports healthcare practitioners and institutions worldwide with essential equipment, software, and consulting services. It has a presence in 32 countries and annual revenues of $12 billion.

Via BleepingComputer

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.