SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – A nationwide cyberattack on United Healthcare impacted several South Lake Tahoe pharmacies.

“United Healthcare is a very large insurance company and they reportedly had a cyber attack last Tuesday,” Tahoe Valley Pharmacy Doug Mundy told the Tribune that “thankfully, none of Tahoe Valley Pharmacy’s patient private health information was compromised.”

“On February 21, 2024, UnitedHealth Group identified a suspected nation-state associated cyber security threat actor had gained access to some of the Change Healthcare information technology systems,” UnitedHealth Group announced, through the United States Securities And Exchange Commission. 

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The company’s health information management systems and technology was “isolated from other connecting systems in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, to contain, assess and remediate the incident.” 

For the Tahoe Valley Pharmacy, the prescription process has returned to normal “save for a few things” that could not be specified for security purposes. Pharmacies nationwide felt the impact, many took their systems offline to use antiquated procedures in an effort to avoid potential spread of the “infection.”

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Both Safeway pharmacy locations were impacted. The location on Elks Point in Stateline, Nev., reported difficulties receiving new, and recovering existing, prescriptions. 

The pharmacist at the Johnson Way Safeway told the Tribune that there are subtle ways the cyber attacks are still impacting normal daily processes. 

“It affected ability to bill insurance for a couple of days and still affects ability to receive electronic Rx, paper scripts,” the pharmacists said there were multiple workarounds that went into place such as ‘converting prescriptions to maintain security of private information.” 

2024 has been a year of challenges for data security country-wide: T-Mobile reported a cyber attack early-January and mid-February AT&T blamed an hours-long outage on coding “not a malicious attack.”

Currently two cities are battling to regain control after being “cripled for weeks”; Oakley and Pleasant Hill are also presently conducting a forensic audit of their situation to see what happened. Things are “coming back on line” John Gioia Contra Costa County Supervisor said. When asked about the cyber attack South Lake Tahoe city officials’ response indicated Cyberattacks are not a new thing and there are multiple plans in place but the mechanisms are becoming more sophisticated; “bad actors” are becoming more proficient. Ten years ago, when ransomware was less sophisticated, according to the city of South Lake Tahoe’s Network Administrator, Sebastian Knapp, a department within the city experienced a “brief” attack. 

“We were able to recover in less than two hours,” Knapp added “the city didn’t need outside involvement and we haven’t been targeted in any significant way since.”

“It’s not that easy anymore,” the specialist admitted, adding “Details [of the Healthcare cyber attack] are sparse, it’s possible the attack is still ongoing.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s department collects tips through the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, is the Nation’s central hub for reporting cyber crime.

According to USAFacts.org 800,944 cyber-crimes were reported in 2022 and there are ever evolving modes these crimes take.

“Phishing emails, attacks, spear fishing, there’s so many different ways,” Knapp told the Tribune anyone can fall victim to a cyberattack and said, “The easiest way they try to get people into giving information away is social engineering by faking an email from a trusted source.”

On Thursday, after an investigation, The Associated Press reported the cyberattack that hit United Healthcare Group was impacting systems for Change Healthcare, Optum, UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group by ransomware group named ALPHV, or Blackcat. Optum Solutions Status has provided multiple daily updates since the attack began regarding the present condition of affairs within its’ organization.

The most recent update states the company is “working on multiple approaches to restore the impacted environment and continue to be proactive and aggressive with all our systems, and if we suspect any issue with the system, we will immediately take action.”

Other results have just begun to “crystallize” according to the American Hospital Association Associate Director of Media Relations, Ben Teicher.

“The impact to hospitals has been underreported,” Teicher said. “As a result we can’t really speak to the longer term aftermath, but it can result in hospitals not being able to make payroll or patients still waiting for services to be approved.”

While details are slowly being released about the nefarious activities, the United States Justice Department announced the coming implementation of an Executive Order addressing national security risks and data security on February 28.

“Our adversaries are exploiting Americans’ sensitive personal data to threaten our national security,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “They are purchasing this data to use to blackmail and surveil individuals, target those they view as dissidents here in the United States, and engage in other malicious activities. This Executive Order gives the Justice Department the authority to block countries that pose a threat to our national security from harvesting Americans’ most sensitive personal data—including human genomic data, biometric and personal identifiers, and personal health and financial data.”