Novo hit with cybersecurity breach, urges vigilance among trial participants

Source Domain: www.biospace.com

Novo Nordisk has suffered a cybersecurity breach involving what the pharma called “unauthorized access” to their trial participants’ personal data.

The severity and breadth of the breach remain unclear, but Novo in a news release on Thursday said that only “a limited amount of information related to patients participating in some of our clinical trials” were affected. The pharma also assured study participants that the accessed data were “not directly linked to any patients by name or other direct identifiers.”

Among the affected data include sex, year of birth, biomarkers, lifestyle factors and patient IDs, which are random letters and numbers used to identify a trial participant after they’ve been anonymized.

The company emphasized that the breach should not “enable any third party to identify participants in our clinical trials,” according to its Thursday release.

Still, Novo urged trial participants to be vigilant and to report to the company if anything unusual happens “that is believed could be linked to the incident.”

For its part, the Danish giant has launched an investigation of the breach, enlisting help from cybersecurity experts. The company has also “taken steps to address the situation,” including temporarily deactivating certain internal systems. The pharma did not specify what these systems are, nor did it say how these interim security measures could affect patient experience.

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