Grieving Southern families are facing delays in coronial investigations after a health data breach at a Dunedin company.<\/p>\n
Zenith Technology (ZenTech) recently confirmed it had been embroiled in a “cyber-security incident”, which resulted in personal information being compromised.<\/p>\n
The firm, which provides clinical trial and analytical laboratory services for the international pharmaceutical industry, said a limited number of people were impacted.<\/p>\n
But questions around how it came to hold the data loom large.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice this week confirmed some of the hacked data involves coronial cases from the Otago and Southland regions, largely affecting cases from 2016-2022.<\/p>\n
Were you affected by the breach? Email reporters@odt.co.nz\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Chief operations officer Carl Crafar said a “small number” of ongoing cases would experience delays as a result of the breach.<\/p>\n
“We acknowledge that this development will be concerning for families who may be worried that information about them or their loved one is involved,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Crafar said government systems had not been targeted and it was unclear how ZenTech held the sensitive data.<\/p>\n
The ministry would work alongside Health New Zealand and police as the investigation continued.<\/p>\n
“We understand some of [the] information is likely to include health-related and identifying data collected as part of the clinical trial process,” a statement on ZenTech’s website said.<\/p>\n
“As soon as this incident was detected, we took immediate steps to ensure the security and integrity of all its systems.”<\/p>\n
The statement said there was now a “thorough investigation” being undertaken with the support of cyber experts.<\/p>\n
The High Court recently granted an interim injunction to prohibit persons from accessing, using or publishing the confidential information held on ZenTech servers.<\/p>\n
A Dunedin family told Stuff they had waited nine months for the coronial findings into the death of an elderly family member.<\/p>\n
The woman\u2019s daughter told Stuff it was “incredibly unfair and exhausting\u201d.<\/p>\n
ZenTech was set up by Dr Cheung Tak Hung, a senior lecturer in the pharmacy department at the University of Otago from 1983-87.<\/p>\n
It has in the past run numerous private clinical trials involving students.<\/p>\n
ZenTech has been contacted for further comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grieving Southern families are facing delays in coronial investigations after a health data breach at a Dunedin company.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-642889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}