Nearly 3 million affected by Sav-Rx data breach

Nearly three million people had sensitive information leaked during an October cyberattack on the prescriptions management company Sav-Rx. 

In filings to regulators last week and a notice on its website, the company said names, addresses, eligibility data, insurance identification numbers and Social Security numbers were accessed when hackers breached their network on October 3. 

Sav-Rx, which manages prescription drug benefits for hundreds of unions and other organizations, discovered the attack on October 8 when they experienced a network disruption. The company’s IT system was restored within 24 hours and all prescriptions were shipped on time without delay. Law enforcement agencies were notified of the attack. 

An investigation completed on April 30 revealed that the hackers accessed non-clinical systems and obtained files related to Sav-Rx’s medication benefits management services platform.

“We provide medication benefits management services to health plan customers. Individuals affected by the incident are or once were participants of those health plans or current or former employees,” the company said on its website. 

“The incident did not affect our pharmacy systems, including those systems related to our mail order pharmacy. Not all customers were impacted, and not all health plan participants were impacted.”

The company told regulators in Maine that a total of 2,812,336 people were affected. They claimed the investigation lasted until April because they wanted to “provide affected individuals with as much accurate information as possible.” All victims have been sent a letter offering two years of credit monitoring services from Equifax. 

Sav-Rx did not respond to requests for comment about whether a ransom was issued for the stolen data but the letters say the company “worked in conjunction with outside cybersecurity experts to contain the incident and confirm any data acquired from our IT System was destroyed and not further disseminated.” 

The attack on Sav-Rx came three months before another major pharmaceutical platform — Change Healthcare — was attacked, compromising the information of allegedly one-third of all Americans.