Insurer hit with ransomware attack

The state’s second-largest insurer suffered large technical outages due to a cybersecurity ransomware incident. Point32Health, the parent company for Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, said in a memo on its website that it identified a ransomware incident on Monday, affecting the systems it uses to service members, accounts, brokers, and providers. A spokesman for the insurer said the outages were mainly affecting members covered under Harvard Pilgrim Health Care’s commercial plans and New Hampshire Medicare plans, though it was not impacting those on the Tufts Health Plan. “After detecting the unauthorized party, and out of an abundance of caution, we proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat,” the insurer said in the statement. “We have notified law enforcement and regulators, and are working with third-party cybersecurity experts to conduct a thorough investigation into this incident and remediate the situation.” On Tuesday, the insurer’s website was down for a time. Some members who tried calling their insurer said they also experienced technical difficulties. The insurer said it was working around the clock to restore impacted systems quickly and urged members with urgent needs to call the member services number on their ID cards. While Point32 s website appeared to be functioning Wednesday, Harvard Pilgrim’s website still appeared to be down. In the memo, executives said they were still determining if sensitive information from members was involved in the incident, and said the insurer would notify those affected if so. While professor Kevin Powers, who heads up the cybersecurity graduate programs at Boston College, didn’t have details on what the Point32 attack included, typically in a ransomware attack criminals encrypt an organization’s data and shut down operations, offering access to the encryption key in exchange for a ransom. While organizations can choose to pay the ransom, law enforcement typically does not advise organizations to do so, as it typically doesn’t guarantee you will get all your data back or protect information that has already been stolen. Massachusetts health care facilities have encountered several cyberattacks in recent years. In 2020, several hospitals in Massachusetts either shut down email systems or installed more aggressive e-mail filters after federal officials warned of phishing e-mails that had sought to send malware to health care executives.