News Insights: Data breach exposes diagnosis data of 34,000 medical marijuana patients | ZDNet
Data breach exposes diagnosis data of 34,000 medical marijuana patients | ZDNet
A breach at Canada’s Natural Health Services has exposed diagnosis data belonging to roughly 34,000 medical marijuana users. An electronic system used by a Canadian service and its parent company was compromised.
READ FULL ARTICLE: Data breach exposes diagnosis data of 34,000 medical marijuana patients | ZDNet
News Insights:
According to Mark Trinidad, Senior Technical Evangelist, Varonis, “We’ve seen stats that personal health information is worth more than SSN or credit card numbers in the dark web, so this particular data breach was meant to go after something more valuable. Diagnostic results from a patient, vs a credit card number that has already been floating around for years in some other dark web database, is a much shinier prize. Diagnostic results are more personal – it’s not a credit card number that can easily be replaced. It humanizes the actual data breached. Hackers could potentially use this data with linked personal information in possible criminal activity. Simply knowing that a person may be getting medical marijuana sent to their house could lead to theft of those deliveries.”
Hugh Taylor
Hugh Taylor is a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM). In addition to editing Journal of Cyber Policy, he writes about cybersecurity, compliance and enterprise technology for such clients as Microsoft, IBM, SAP, HPE, Oracle, Google and Advanced Micro Devices. Prior to launching his freelance writing career, he served in executive roles at Microsoft, IBM and several venture-backed technology startups.