37,800 people sent privacy breach notifications linked to N.L. cyberattack
CBC
Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority has notified 37,800 people that their privacy was breached as part of last fall's devastating cyberattack.
That number equates to about one in every 13 people in the province.
And according to Eastern Health, it could go even higher.
Those affected include patients, along with current and former employees.
The Department of Health steered interview requests to Eastern Health, which did not make anyone available for an interview.
In October, cybercriminals rocked Newfoundland and Labrador's health-care system.
Information was stolen, lab results were inaccessible, and procedures and treatments were delayed.
Government officials have been tight-lipped about what happened, refusing to say whether it was a ransomware attack, or who was responsible.
The initial bad news spawned by the attack got worse in March, with the revelation that the scope of the breach was worse than originally thought.
More than 200,000 files had been taken from an Eastern Health network drive.
The health authority's CEO, David Diamond, said at the time that a review had been launched to determine how many people had been affected.
"We expect the number could be large, could be thousands of individuals at the end of the day between staff and patients," Diamond said March 30.
"But that'll become clear as we do the work over the next six to eight weeks."
Those weeks have now passed, and what was once "thousands of individuals" is, at this point, 37,800.
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