Community Health Center (CHC) of Connecticut has reported a significant data breach affecting 1,060,936 patients’ personal and health information. The incident, discovered on January 2, 2025, originated from a network intrusion in mid-October 2024.

The breach compromised sensitive information including:
– Personal data (names, birth dates, addresses, contact details, SSNs)
– Health records (medical diagnoses, treatments, test results)
– Insurance information

Despite the breach’s scope, CHC confirmed that:
– No systems were encrypted
– Daily operations remained unaffected
– The unauthorized access was stopped within hours
– No current threat exists to their systems

Investigation revealed a “skilled criminal hacker” was responsible for the attack. This incident joins a series of recent healthcare sector breaches, including:
– New York Blood Center’s ransomware attack
– UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare breach affecting 190 million Americans

In response to increasing healthcare security incidents, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed HIPAA updates to enhance patient data protection.

CHC, which serves over 145,000 active patients with primary medical, dental, and mental health services, is working to strengthen its security measures while maintaining normal operations.