Top Health Doctors, a clinic group based in Brisbane, recently suffered from an email account breach in September which potentially affected approximately 5500 individuals.
The incident was made public last week when Services Australia initiated a data matching exercise to determine whether patients’ Medicare numbers or Centrelink Reference Numbers were among the accessed details.
Services Australia stated that they will crosscheck the data provided by Top Health Doctors with their own customer records to identify any affected individuals. As a result, proactive security measures will be implemented to safeguard affected customer records.
According to an initial analysis by Top Health Doctors, the incident was limited to a single mailbox at their West End clinic, specifically an administration mailbox. As a precaution, all patients at the West End practice were notified about the breach.
Top Health Doctors also reported the incident to relevant authorities, including Services Australia, who possess a specialized team capable of implementing precautionary measures on affected records if deemed necessary.
Services Australia mentioned that the compromised medical practice had provided data on Medicare or Centrelink concession card details, such as the card number, expiry date, customer name, as well as the customer’s date of birth and residential address.
