The Saskatchewan Health Authority is advising residents that the cyberattack on eHealth Saskatchewan earlier this year may have resulted in a potential privacy breach of personal health information.
The malware attack was reported in January 2020, and a forensic investigation has now concluded that while no evidence shows personal health information was compromised, it cannot be ruled out as a possibility either.
Due to the inability to confirm a privacy breach, the SHA is issuing a public notice.
The potential breach impacted systems administered by eHealth for both the SHA and the Ministry of Health, after an employee opened an attachment in an email and the malware spread throughout the province’s IT system.
The SHA says it was able to contain and eliminate the malware upon discovery of the breach, restoring any compromised files, but the investigation found that some encrypted files were sent to a suspicious IP address.
These files were restored from backups, but investigators could not determine what information from the group of files was sent to the IP address.
Since the incident, eHealth continues to monitor the internet for any Saskatchewan files that may have been circulated, with no evidence showing this has occurred yet. The latest scan was in November.
The SHA and Ministry of Health have intensified training for employees on the dangers of opening emails with suspicious attachments, and eHealth is making continuous security upgrades to its IT network to strengthen security.
