ZooTampa and HCA Healthcare latest victims of cyber attacks

Latest victims of cyber attacks

ZooTampa and HCA Healthcare both reported that they’ve been the victim of cyber attacks.

Federal government involved

ZooTampa has employed the help of the federal government to investigate the attack. Some are speculating HCA Healthcare will ask for the same assistance from the FBI.

Downtime = Lost money

While the downtime was minimal for both organizations, the downtime was still costly. Future costs from providing credit reporting to costs associated with 3rd party investigators could make this an extremely costly incident for both organizations.

news > cyber-attacks > general
by Kevin Wood

ZooTampa, HCA Healthcare latest victims of cyber-attack

both organizations took immediate action

In a recent report, ZooTampa revealed that it has been the victim of a “cybersecurity incident” that directly targeted it’s network environment. The zoo took immediate security measures in order to mitigate the attack and stop any further spread.

It’s unknown what the target of the attack was or how much data the attackers gained access to. The zoo is working with the federal government and a 3rd party forensics company to investigate the breach.

A ZooTampa spokesperson told reporters that the zoo does not store personal or financial information on any of it’s visitors. It does, however, store information about employees and vendors. ZooTampa took immediate action and notified all employees and vendors who may have been impacted by this breach.

In a similar event, a spokesperson for HCA Healthcare notified officials that it became aware of a breach on July 5th, 2023. They identified the breach after the hacker suspected of the HCA incident posted a sample file online and the data was reviewed and matched to actual data HCA Healthcare claims was compromised.

The information of at least 11 million patients was compromised affecting patients in 20 states including, Florida, Georgia and Texas. The information stolen is believed to be: Patient name, city, state and zip code, email address, phone number, date of birth, gender, service date, location and last appointment. If this breach is confirmed and that many patients were affected, this incident would be in the top 5 healthcare related incidents of stolen patient information.

The largest breach of patient data occurred in 2015 when medical insurer Anthem was compromised and the information of 79 million people was affected. Chinese spies were eventually indicted in that case however there is no evidence any of that data was put up for sale.

In a notice to patients, HCA is asking that all patients call their service line first before paying any invoices. HCA Healthcare confirmed the number to call is (844) 608-1803.

“We’re working with the federal government to investigate this incident.”
– ZooTampa spokesperson