Many of their customers might be exposed to identity theft

Nov 5, 2011 10:00 GMT  ·  By

At the end of October, Lawrence Memorial Hospital representatives learned that a large quantity of sensitive information belonging to their customers was inadvertently published on the internet by Mid Continent Credit Services.

According to 6 News Lawrence, the data was made public between September 20 and October 28, 2011 and it did not contain any medical records.

Unfortunately for those involved, the lack of proper security measures on a website hosted by BrickWire LLC revealed tons of sensitive info such as credit card information, account number, verification number and expiration date.

In some cases only names, phone numbers and email addresses were made public, but that's bad enough. Other unlucky customers had their checking account information revealed to the public, which means that at any moment they could fall victims to identity theft of check fraud.

“Lawrence Memorial Hospital takes the privacy and security of individuals' information very seriously. Upon discovery of the event, we immediately notified Mid Continent Credit Services, which coordinated with BrickWire to immediately disable the system and implement measures to disable access to the information,” the hospital said in a statement.

“We are continuing to follow up with Mid Continent Credit Services regarding the event, and are currently in the process of arranging for a new online payment system. We will take any other measures determined to be necessary to prevent a similar event from occurring in the future.”

This is the worst type data leak that can affect a public institution and as a result, many of their customers becoming easy targets for fraudsters.

All those who were at some point patients of the medical facility should immediately contact their banks to make sure all the transactions that involve their accounts will be closely monitored. Mid Continent Credit Services will also offer a free one-year credit monitoring subscription to affected individuals to minimize the impact of the incident.