Tens of Thousands of Professional Dental Alliance Patients Impacted in Phishing Attack on Business Associate

A group of dental clinics practices affiliated with the North American Dental Group, Professional Dental Alliance, has made contact with tens of thousands of clients to make them aware that a portion of their PHI being held in email accounts may have been illegally accessed by an unauthorized individual at some point in time from March 31 to April 1, 2021.

Professional Dental Alliance has confirmed that the breach took place at its vendor North American Dental Management. Measures were quickly implemented to lock down the impacted accounts and stop additional unauthorized access from taking place. An official review was carried out which showed that several email accounts had been accessed by an unauthorized individual after employees replied to phishing emails.

The review into the breach found nothing to suggest that there had been attempted or actual improper use of patient data, with the investigators saying that the breach was likely restricted to credential harvesting. An in-depth review of the impacted email accounts found that they included protected health information such as names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, insurance information, Social Security numbers, dental data, and/or financial records. Professional Dental Alliance says the electronic dental record system and dental images were not infiltrated.

While it seems that PHI was not illegally obtained, impacted individuals have been asked to use caution and review their credit reports and account statements and be vigilant for signs of misuse of their data.  Professional Dental Alliance says anyone impacted is being given the chance to avail of free membership to credit monitoring and identity theft protection services for 24 months.

Around 173,000 patients are thought to have had their protected health information infiltrated. The breach has been made known to the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights by every entity impacted.  

Covered Entity	Individuals Affected
Professional Dental Alliance	47,173
Professional Dental Alliance of Connecticut	6,237
Professional Dental Alliance of Florida	18,626
Professional Dental Alliance of Georgia	23,974
Professional Dental Alliance of Illinois	16,673
Professional Dental Alliance of Indiana	7,359
Professional Dental Alliance of Massachusetts	607
Professional Dental Alliance of Michigan	26,054
Professional Dental Alliance of New York	10,778
Professional Dental Alliance of Tennessee	11,217
Professional Dental Alliance of Texas	4,235