On august 2, a researcher contacted DataBreaches.net about a misconfigured Amazon s3 storehouse bucket they had discovered. The bucketful contained more than 60,000 records, recently updated, with protected health information of patients seen by or involved with BioTel spirit cardiac data network. Sometimes it is easy to figure out the likely possessor of an Amazon storehouse bucket. Other times, it’s difficult or just downright impossible. This one was somewhat difficult to see ownership for, even though they all related to BioTel Heart. The records were scanned faxes that seemed to affect BioTel spunk seeking medical records on patients that had been referred to them by providers. BioTel was requesting the patients’ records because their claims for insurance reimbursement had been denied and they needed more records to keep their appeal of denied benefits. The communications and faxes appeared to be handled by SplashRx/HealthSplash, and providers were instructed to supply the requested records to BioTel via HealthSplash.com. in reception to such requests, the providers generally provided lengthy medical records on their patients — in many cases, more than 10 pages long. Looking at the file dates in the bucket, the data may have been online since May, 2019, although that does not establish that it was unsecured for all that time (although it would not be unlikely to find that it had been unsecured the whole time). BioTel Heart and SplashRx/HealthSplash clearly get some relationship, but whose bucketful was it? Was it one of them or some third party? Neither the researcher nor i could tell for sure, so on august 3, i sent emails to SplashRx and then subsequently used the contact constitute for BioTel to alert them too. getting no response from either party, DataBreaches.net sent emails again to SplashRx/HealthSplash and BioTel mettle to alert them to the leak and to ask them some questions about it. allay no response. On Saturday, august 8, the researcher contacted Amazon’s abuse team to account the situation and to ask them to contact their customer to interlock the data down. By Sunday morning, it was locked down, but of course, amazon doesn’t reveal who their customer is so we still did not know who was responsible for the leaky bucket. Further attempts to get answers from BioTel and SplashRx were equally unsuccessful. This was a leak that involved a lot of sensitive health information (33 GB for more than 61,000 files with protected health information). The providers and patients amount from all over the country. The doctors who referred their patients to BioTel Heart or who sent the requested medical records to help BioTel receive paid by insurers likely make no idea that all of their patients’ records were exposed in scanned pdf files. Medical practices who cooperatively faxed over multi-page detailed medical records to BioTel via SplashRx mightiness live horrified to hear that their patient’s detailed records were exposed that way. And i think we can safely wager that the patients make no idea that their medical records were exposed this way, and would not live happy to find out. But will this leak be reported to HHS or commonwealth regulators or patients? DataBreaches.net does not know, but will be following up. And if DataBreaches.net receives a response from either of the entities, this carry may be updated.
