LifeLabs said it cannot say how many people in Langley were affected by a recent data breach that saw up to 15 million customer’s data potentially accessed as the investigation is ongoing, according to the organization.
Charles Brown, president and CEO of LifeLabs, wrote an open letter to customers on Dec. 17 that explained the company had suffered a cyber-attack that involved “unauthorized access” to their systems with “customer information that could include name, address, email, login, passwords, date of birth, health card number and lab test results.”
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Approximately 15 million customers were affected, primarily in British Columbia and Ontario.
Most customers potentially affected in B.C. have visited a LifeLabs for medical tests or other locations like hospitals, medical clinics, private and public lab providers across the province, LifeLabs explained.
“As a provider of laboratory services, we partner with many health care providers who send customer specimens to LifeLabs for testing. As a result, LifeLabs does not have contact information for all of our customers,” LifeLabs told The Langley Advance Times.
The company is working with health care providers to “notify customers through public channels.”
“We can confirm that the data has been retrieved and that the issue has been contained,” LifeLabs said.
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LifeLabs has notified the privacy commissioners of the attack, according to Brown’s open letter.
But customers who may be concerned are encouraged to visit customernotice.lifelabs.com to learn more about signing up for a free cyber security protection service.
“At this time, our cyber security firms have advised that the risk to our customers in connection with this cyber-attack is low and that they have not seen any public disclosure of customer data during their investigations, which include monitoring of the dark web and other online locations,” LifeLabs said.
LifeLabs said they are working with cyber security firms to put in place safeguards to protect customers’ information and reduce the risk of future attacks.
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