Luxottica, the world’s largest eyewear company, experienced a cyberattack that affected some of the websites operated by the company.
Luxottica is the owner of eyewear brands such as Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Persol and produces designer eyewear for many well-known fashion brands. It also operates the EyeMed vision benefits company and partners with LensCrafters, Target Optical, EyeMed, Pearle Vision, and other eye care providers.
Luxottica partners are provided with web-based appointment scheduling software that allows patients to book appointments with eye care providers online and by phone. According to a recent breach notification, the appointment scheduling application was hacked by unknown individuals on August 5, 2020 and the attackers potentially gained access to the personal and protected health information of patients of its eye care partners.
Luxottica discovered the cyberattack on August 9, 2020 and immediately took steps to contain the breach. The subsequent investigation confirmed personal and protected health information were potentially accessed and acquired by the attackers. The types of data exposed included names, contact information, appointment dates and times, health insurance policy numbers, appointment notes, doctors’ notes, and information related to eye care treatment, including health conditions, procedures, and prescriptions. A limited number of patients also had their credit card number and/or Social Security number exposed.
Luxottica is unaware of any cases of misuse of personal or protected health information but, as a precaution, individuals whose financial information or Social Security number was potentially compromised have been offered a 2-year complimentary membership to Kroll’s identity theft protection service. Notifications started to be sent to the 829,454 individuals affected by the breach on October 27, 2020.
This is not the only security breach to have affected Luxottica this year. On September 18, 2020, the eyewear company suffered a Nefilim ransomware attack that caused significant outages and disruption to services in Italy and China. Sensitive information was also stolen in the attack prior to the deployment of ransomware.
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