MediSecure calls in administrators after cyber breach

Electronic prescription provider MediSecure has entered voluntary administration less than a month after it was hit by a cyber breach.

The company appointed Paul Harlond and Vaughan Strawbridge of FTI Consulting as administrators on June 3 and as liquidators the following day.

"We recognise the significant concern and the impact of the recent cyber incident," Strawbridge said.

"The company has been in contact with the Australian government with respect to providing information in response to that incident.

"We will be speaking to the Australian government about what they need from the company and the next steps in the response to the cyber incident."

The first creditor meeting is scheduled for June 14.

MediSecure last issued a statement on May 31, saying it had sought help from the government to assist with “costs associated with responding to the incident”.

“The request was not for funding MediSecure’s operational costs unrelated to the cyber attack,” the statement read. “In any event, that request was denied.”

In the same statement, MediSecure said it had been “reviewing the data set exposed on a dark web forum to identify impacted individuals following the recent restoration of the data”.

News of a major breach initially came from the National Cyber Security Coordinator, who revealed that an unspecified "health information organisation" was the “victim of a large-scale ransomware data breach incident” on May 15.

MediSecure issued a statement on May 16 saying it had identified a cyber breach that was “impacting the personal and health information of individuals”.

MediSecure was a prescription exchange service (PES), a kind of secure messaging system that "specialises in transferring prescriptions between prescribers and [a] dispenser".

The government, through the Department of Health and Aged Care, last year established the national Prescription Delivery Service, which is provided by a different PES operator, eRx.

The Department of Home Affairs has said that eRx is “not affected by the MediSecure cyber incident”.

“Consumers can continue to access medicines safely, and healthcare providers can still prescribe and dispense as usual,” the department said.