This story was updated on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2020 at 7:20 p.m. with a statement from the Department of Veterans Affairs. VA did not immediately return a request to explain the wide discrepancy in accounts about the number of impacted community care providers.
The data breach the Department of Veterans Affairs announced earlier this week exposed personal information for 46,000 veterans, but it also hit several thousand community care providers that supplement the agency’s medical program.
Approximately 17,000 community care providers that provide health services to veterans were also victims of the breach, Democrats on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee said Wednesday.
Officials had briefed members of the House and Senate veterans committees about the VA data breach.
“Based on information currently available, it appears this cybersecurity incident was carried out by those able to find weaknesses in the way VA authenticates community care health care providers using veterans care agreements and processes payments for their services,” senators, led by committee ranking member Jon Tester (D-Mont.), said in a letter to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.
VA on Thursday evening pushed back against the senators’ account.
“There were 13 VA community care providers involved in this incident, not 17,000. VA will reimburse those vendors who had payments diverted,” Christina Noel, a department spokeswoman said in an email to Federal News Network.
She did not immediately return an request from Federal News Network to explain the vast discrepancy between the two figures.
Social Security numbers and other personally-identifiable information for 46,000 veterans were potentially compromised in the VA data breach, ..
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