More than 600K patients affected in UNM Health hack

The University of New Mexico Health System began notifying patients earlier this month about a recent cybersecurity incident resulting in potential data exposure.

According to the system's report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights, 637,252 individuals were affected.  

UNM Health said that on May 2, an unauthorized third party gained access to its network and could have accessed or obtained certain files. The health system discovered the breach on June 4, more than a month later.  

"One of the more disparaging and difficult issues with data breaches is the revelation of how long the cybercriminals were inside the organization's network undetected," observed James McQuiggan, security awareness advocate at the training vendor KnowBe4.   

"Part of the cybercriminal's repertoire is to silently work through an endpoint to the critical systems by using exploits and stolen credentials," McQuiggan added.