ManageMyHealth confirms doctors’ information unaffected after cyber attack

Police and health agencies continue to investigate the breach after 108,000 people, at least, are thought to have been caught up in the cyber data breach. Photo / Getty Images

The chief executive of online medical portal ManageMyHealth has assured that doctors’ access to patient information has not been compromised following a cyber attack that affected up to 126,000 users.

Police and health agencies continue to investigate the breach after 108,000 people, at least, are thought to have been caught up in the cyber data breach.

Chief executive officer of Manage My Health, Vino Ramayah, said the doctor’s information had not been affected at all.

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Andrew Dickens this morning, Ramayah said they were in the middle stages of their investigations and expected more information to be released over the coming days.

He said they have not yet figured out if the attack came from overseas and refused to comment on the majority of the details of the attack after advice from the police.

Ramayah said the attackers had not “taken everything”.

“What we have been able to ascertain so far, it is confined to maybe 7% of our total users, which I know is a large number.

“The doctors’ information at this point in time, to the best of my knowledge, has not been affected at all.”

The number of users impacted is between 108,000 and 126,000 users.

He said they get a lot of intrusions, it just happened that this time they were able to bypass their security.

“We are unpacking all of the elements of this. We think we made some good progress, which I think will rapidly improve, in the course of the next two days, whereupon we would give out more information which is reliable.

“What we know is the data in our systems is all the time encrypted, but there is obviously a whole range of tools and, you know, which the dark web uses to try to unpack or decrypt data. But I can’t really comment on the actual, technicalities of this.”

The police and Ministry of Health have been notified, and Ramayah said he was “engaging” with the “agencies and other organisations” to coordinate a response.

Health Minister Simeon Brown called the breach “concerning”, and Health New Zealand (HNZ) was working closely with ManageMyHealth to ensure it was being appropriately addressed.

“At this stage, there is no evidence any HNZ systems, including My Health Account, have been compromised as ManageMyHealth has separate systems,” he said.

Duty Minister Karen Chhour said this was “incredibly concerning for patients”.

“The Minister of Health has asked for urgent assurances from Health NZ and Manage My Health that everything is being done to protect patient data and patient privacy. We also expect ManageMyHealth to communicate transparently to ensure public confidence in their product.”

A spokesperson from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the National Cyber Security Centre also confirmed they were working with the company.