As a sign of the times, not even the sick are safe from the greedy hands of hackers. Recently, it was reported that cybercriminals broke into the Community Health Systems (CHS) database and stole the records of 4.5 million patients.

Among the information that was stolen included names, Social Security numbers, birthdays, addresses and telephone numbers. Anyone who received treatment from CHS, which operates across 28 different states in the United States, during the last five years was affected by the attack. The attack also affects those who were referred to CHS from other healthcare providers.

Right now, CHS is working with both the FBI and a team of cyber security experts as they try to locate the source of the attack. So far the only information that is available is that the attack originated in China, and was deployed using high-end malware at some point between April and June 2014.

What is especially troubling about this report is that while CHS can perform damage control and attempt to find the suspects who stole the information, the damage to its patient database has already been done. Once such large volumes of sensitive information are stolen, it is all but impossible to retrieve them.

Personal information can then be sold to other criminal networks, and those people can then use it to deploy even more attacks. For network professionals, this incident serves as a lesson to be learned about protecting endpoints and working to mitigate the likelihood of an attack from occurring.

So, how do you make sure this doesn’t happen to your customer database? The best way is to invest in a hosted service that will provide you with the necessary tools for keeping a close watch on your user endpoints. Malware needs to be detected early in order to prevent it from spreading.

Click here to learn how Apex managed IT services in Norwalk, CT can help keep your data safe.