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HomeNewsPatient Information Compromised In Ontario Wide Paramedic Service Data Security Incident

Patient Information Compromised In Ontario Wide Paramedic Service Data Security Incident

KAWARTHA LAKES-Kawartha 411 News has learned thousands of patients have had their personal information accessed in a data breach involving technology used by paramedic services across the province.

The breach happened three days ago at a company called ESO and the service has been offline since according to our sources.

We have reached out to ESO who says they wouldn’t call it a data breach but “unauthorized access”.

“As of right now there’s no indication any data has been taken out of the system or compromised and we made the decision to take the system offline,” Andy Prince, VP Corporate Communications told Kawartha 411 News. “We brought in a third-party forensic analysis team to see if there was a compromise and are doing a deep dive analysis.”

They are also trying to find workarounds for paramedics

“We are looking for short term solutions to ensure they can stay operational and figure out how this happened to have a full understanding of what went down and why.” said Prince

ESO has approximately 100 customers in Ontario.

Eso says they notified the Ministry of Health on Monday and have been keeping them appraised of the situation twice a day.

Peterborough County Paramedics says it was informed by ESO, of a cybersecurity incident on their software which captures patient data. This software is used by Peterborough County-City Paramedics and other paramedic services across Ontario including City of Kawartha Lakes.

“The system has been voluntarily and precautionarily shut down and ESO is currently
conducting a forensic investigation. While the system is important for many paramedics
services, it doesn’t impact our ability to respond to 9-1-1 emergency calls.
“Medical emergency calls to 911 and our front-line service are not directly impacted”,
said Peterborough County-City Paramedic Chief Randy Mellow.

No one advised the public of this incident until we started asking questions about it this morning.

This story has been updated with information from ESO.

 

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Pamela Vanmeer
Pamela Vanmeerhttps://www.kawartha411.ca/
Pamela VanMeer is a two time winner of the prestigious Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) Award. Her investigative reports on abuse in Long Term Care Homes garnered international attention for the issue and won the Ron Laidlaw Award. She is a former reporter and anchor at CHEX News, now Global Peterborough and helped launch the New CHEX Daily, a daily half hour talk show. While at CHCH News in Hamilton she covered some of the biggest news stories of the day.

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