Quest Diagnostics Hit by Cyber Breach, Patient Records Exposed

Quest Diagnostics, the New Jersey medical lab giant, has disclosed a cyber breach affecting its Quanum Lab Services Manager platform, the system clients use to order tests and retrieve results. The company spotted the intrusion on Wednesday and filed a regulatory notice the following day, also alerting federal law enforcement.

The full damage is still being tallied. Quest says it believes 'certain patient records' were accessed, but won't be more specific until its investigation concludes. External cybersecurity consultants have been brought in to help. Standard breach response playbook, basically.

This is not Quest's first rodeo. Back in 2016, a breach exposed lab results and contact details for around 34,000 patients. Then in 2019, roughly 11.9 million Quest patients had personal data compromised after hackers hit American Medical Collection Agency, a third-party billing firm Quest used. That one was particularly ugly given the scale.

For those keeping score, healthcare remains a favourite target for attackers, though the current wave of breaches is hitting well beyond hospitals and labs. Supermarket chains, education platforms and other critical services have all taken hits recently.

Separately, the security community has been scrambling this week after AI-assisted analysis uncovered vulnerabilities in PHP, the scripting language underpinning about 70% of websites worldwide. Patches are being rushed out, and some services are still experiencing disruptions. Quest confirmed to the Associated Press that its breach has no connection to the PHP issue, so at least that particular fire isn't spreading here.