Amgen Reports Theft of Patient Data in Cyber Incident
Amgen Inc. experienced a cyber incident that involved the theft of patient information and proprietary data stored in cloud servers, it said in a filing July 31, the latest large healthcare company to suffer a data breach.
The drugmaker is still assessing the damage but said it’s not likely to have a material impact on financial results.
A representative for Amgen declined to comment beyond the filing.
Amgen detected unauthorized access to the data on third-party cloud servers in July. It subsequently learned some of the data, including patient protected health information, has been exfiltrated from the cloud environment.
“To date, the company has not identified any impact to its products, manufacturing operations, or financial reporting systems, or to the company’s ability to meet patient needs,” it said in the filing.
The incident is material because of the volume of files affected and the risk that sensitive information was compromised, the company said. The investigation is underway.
It’s the latest setback for the Thousand Oaks, California, drugmaker. The company is separately facing safety questions over its drug Tavneos, which is intended to treat a rare autoimmune condition. A major journal has retracted the study used to support Tavneos’ approval, and regulators in the US and Europe want it off the market.
Amgen has also been grappling with declining sales of its older medicines as they lose patent protection. Investors are focused on new pipeline products, particularly the weight-loss shot MariTide, with early evidence suggesting it’s not as desirable as existing treatments from Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk A/S.
Earlier this year, a cyberattack disrupted operations at medical-technology company Stryker Corp. Soon afterward, Intuitive Surgical Inc., which makes surgical tools and systems, said it was the victim of a cybersecurity incident. Last month, Novo Nordisk identified unauthorized access to some IT systems the drugmaker uses for its global business.
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