United of Omaha Life Insurance Company located in Nebraska submitted a phishing attack report that indicated the compromise of the protected health information (PHI) of 107,894 people. The insurer discovered the breach on April 23, 2024 after identifying suspicious activity in an employee’s email account. United of Omaha noticed that a third party accessed the email account and blocked account access by altering the employee’s Microsoft account passwords. The domain linked to the phishing attack was also blocked and reported.
According to the forensic investigation, access to the account was made possible after a phishing attack targeting employees. One employee responded to the email message and exposed the credentials. The investigation affirmed that the account had been accessed from April 21 to April 23, 2024. The breach just impacted the employee’s email account and the other computer systems or networks were not affected.
United of Omaha Life Insurance reviewed the email account to find out the types of data that were possibly accessed or stolen. The process of email review was completed on June 28, 2024. Though the unauthorized third party did not use the email account to send any data, unauthorized access to the email messages and attachments within the account cannot be excluded.
The email messages and attachments included data associated with United of Omaha’s group insurance products. Although it was impossible to find out the exact types of data compromised per person, they probably contained full names, demographic details such as addresses and birth dates, medical insurance policy numbers, driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers, employment details, and limited health data.
Because it seems that the unauthorized third party stole some data, United of Omaha Life Insurance provided the impacted persons with free identity theft protection services for one year. Also, additional education and HIPAA training is given to the employees, including the skills to identify and report phishing attacks.