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Health officials in Massachusetts are issuing a warning that over 134,000 individuals may have had their personal and medical information compromised in a recent data security incident. The incident involves the file-transfer program MOVEit and is believed to be a part of a worldwide data breach affecting various government agencies, financial services firms, pension funds, and other organizations.

The affected individuals are those who are currently or previously enrolled in certain state programs and receive services from UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, which provides services to the agency. The Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) has reported that data that may have been exposed includes names, dates of birth, mailing addresses, Social Security numbers, financial information, and protected health information such as diagnosis and treatment details, prescription information, provider names, dates of service, and health insurance-related information.

UMass Chan Medical School was made aware of the data incident on June 1. However, the school and state systems were not compromised in this incident. The vulnerable software program, MOVEit, was immediately fixed, law enforcement was contacted, and an investigation was launched.

Affected individuals are advised to take steps to protect their information, such as monitoring their financial account statements and enrolling in free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. UMass Chan has identified the files that may have been subject to unauthorized acquisition as a result of the security flaw and determined that some of these files contained information related to individuals who received services from EOHHS.

The Massachusetts government website states that MOVEit is a file transfer software program licensed by a company called Progress Software and was used by UMass Chan to transfer files for certain EOHHS agencies and programs.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is currently investigating the origin of the attack and the extent of the stolen information.

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