Henry Schein, a company that provides dental and medical products, recently faced a cyber incident in September. A group called AlphV/BlackCat took responsibility for this breach. About 29,112 people, including over three dozen from Maine, had their personal information at risk. The exposed data included names, financial details, and credit/debit card numbers, along with security codes and passwords.
Goldman Sachs analysts revealed that Henry Schein is trying to regain customers who turned elsewhere during the cyber incident. The company is offering discounts to win back 10% to 15% of its customers who sought services elsewhere during the system downtime. Henry Schein detected the breach on October 14 and took some systems offline to manage the situation. Fortunately, the incident didn’t disrupt the practice management software used by clients.
A month later, on November 17, the company notified employees that their personal data might have been accessed. The compromised information included names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, photographs, dates of birth, financial details, medical history, and more. U.S. suppliers were also informed about the misuse of bank account information due to the data breach.
Although Henry Schein mostly restored its operations, it lowered sales expectations for the 2023 fiscal year due to the cybersecurity breach. The company expects an impact of $0.55 to $0.75 on earnings per share due to business interruption. The cyber incident caused a delay in filing regulatory documents, but the company has since submitted the required forms. AlphV/BlackCat, the ransomware group, claimed responsibility for the breach.
Henry Schein faced another disruption to its e-commerce platform on November 22, as reported in a subsequent update. However, as of November 27, the company announced the restoration of its e-commerce platform in the U.S., with Canada and Europe to follow soon.
To retain business, the company is offering discounts of 10% to 20% off product list prices until December. These discounts may continue into the next year as sales representatives strive to keep customer loyalty amidst the cyber incident fallout.
Tags: cybersecurity, data breach, Henry Schein, ransomware, AlphV/BlackCat, personal information, cyber incident, Goldman Sachs, customer discounts, business interruption, sales expectations, e-commerce, recovery efforts, information security, financial impact
