Posted On June 6, 2022 Consumer Privacy & Data Breaches
June 6, 2022 – Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, formerly Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, reported a data breach after the company was targeted in a recent cybersecurity attack. As a result of this breach, individuals’ personal and protected health information were compromised. At this time, the complete list of all the data elements compromised has not yet been released. On May 25, 2022, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, sent out data breach letters to those individuals whose information was affected by the breach.
The data breach lawyers at Console & Associates, P.C. are going to begin interviewing victims of the breach to determine what damages they sustained and what legal claims may be available to them. If you recently received a NOTICE OF DATA BREACH from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, contact us at (866) 778-5500 to discuss your legal options, or submit a confidential contact form for a free case evaluation.
Below is a portion of the letter that Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, sent to individuals affected by the data breach:
Dear [Redacted],
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, which is now known as Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (“Fred Hutch”), is committed to the privacy of individuals and takes the protection of personal information that is entrusted to us seriously. Unfortunately, we are writing to make you aware of a recent data security incident that may have involved some of your personal information.
What Happened.
On March 26, 2022, we discovered that someone outside of Fred Hutch temporarily accessed an employee’s email account without authorization from March 25 to March 26, 2022. Upon learning of the situation, we contained the incident by securing the account to prevent further access and promptly began an internal investigation. As a result of the investigation, we’ve discovered that the email account contained certain of your protected health and personal information.
What We Are Doing.
In addition to preventing further access and launching an investigation, we also retained a leading forensic security firm to further investigate the incident and confirm the security of our computer systems. Additionally, we have taken steps to help prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future. We have notified federal law enforcement of the incident. At this time, we have no indication that any of your information has been subject to fraud or misuse. Nonetheless we are offering you a complimentary one year membership of Experian IdentityWorksSM. This product helps detect possible misuse of your personal information and provides you with identity protection services focused on immediate identification and resolution of identity theft. IdentityWorksSM is completely free to you and enrolling in this program will not hurt your credit score. For more information on identity theft prevention and IdentityWorks, including instructions on how to activate your complimentary, one year membership, please see the additional information attached to this letter.
What Information Was Involved.
As part of our investigation, we reviewed the email account, and we recently determined that the account contained your name, [Redacted].
What You Can Do.
You can find more information on steps to protect yourself against identity theft or fraud in the enclosed Additional Important Information sheet. We also recommend that you enroll in the complimentary credit monitoring services that are being offered.
For More Information.
For further information and assistance, please call [Redacted] from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time Monday through Friday (excluding some U.S. holidays).
