Massachusetts
‘Don’t assume you are safe’: Data breaches spike in Massachusetts, following national trend – The Boston Globe
Micale said she quickly called up her bank and put a freeze on her account. But that put her trip to Boston with her husband, the first after over a year of long COVID, on hold.
“It was really stressful,” she said. “I had to cancel all my reservations and start over from scratch.”
Micale is far from the only Massachusetts resident to be impacted by a data breach in recent years.
A new Globe analysis of state data shows just how off-the-charts the problem has become. In 2022, 1.9 million Massachusetts resident accounts were impacted by data breaches. The following year, that number spiked to more than 6.9 million accounts, fueled in part by large-scale breaches, including one that affected more than 2 million Harvard Pilgrim Health Care accounts.
So far this year, the numbers are already above the historical average, though not quite as striking as 2023, with 1.8 million accounts breached through September.
The overall uptick is “a trend around the world,” said Stuart Madnick codirector of MIT’s flagship cybersecurity consortium. “It’s no surprise that Massachusetts is part of the uptick.”
As more data than ever, including sensitive personal banking and health care information, is stored on the internet, breaches are becoming increasingly common, he and others said. Meanwhile, hacker groups are also becoming more sophisticated, putting more people at risk of fraud and identity theft.
Across the United States, an estimated 353 million accounts fell victim to data breaches last year, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, a national nonprofit that provides cost-free assistance to identity theft victims. The total number of breaches was 72 percent higher than the previous record year of 2021.
Data breach victims can suffer serious financial and personal repercussions after their information is compromised. For consumers, their financial information could be sold on the dark web, where scammers can purchase it and rack up debt in their name.
The burden of dealing with the consequences, such as contesting fraudulent charges, often falls on consumers.
Doing so can prove challenging even for tech-savvy people like Leigh Graham, a Johns Hopkins researcher, whose personal data has been breached at least twice in the past year, including when her employer was breached.
Graham, who lives in Northampton, said she struggled to navigate credit bureau websites to freeze her credit report after she noticed that someone spent $550 on Ticketmaster in her name.
“I’m 49, but I feel like I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” she said. “The onus is so on the individual consumer to fix everything.”
Companies impacted by data breaches may find themselves paying hefty ransom to keep their clients’ data from being published online.
That’s what happened to Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of United Health, a national conglomerate. It paid a $22 million ransom earlier this year to a hacking group that stole protected health information from their systems. The health care group acknowledged that the stolen data could include information on a “substantial proportion of people in America.” Massachusetts data indicates that tens of thousands of residents were caught up in the breach.
Screenshots of some of the hacked data ended up online, despite the ransom payment. The hack also reportedly led to problems for patients in getting prescriptions approved at hundreds of medical facilities across the country.
In Massachusetts, both national behemoths, like T-Mobile, and smaller organizations, like the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River, have been hit by data breaches in recent years, data shows. Even state government employees have been targeted.
At smaller organizations, experts say it’s a daunting task for IT teams with limited resources to compete with large international hacking organizations.
“A lot of [small] organizations have to face a cost-benefit tradeoff, and sometimes just have to accept a certain level of risk,” said Saroja Hanasoge, director of advisory services at CyberTrust Massachusetts, which partners with cities and organizations across the state to beef up their cybersecurity.
The largest reported hack affecting Massachusetts residents since 2017 happened last year, when Harvard Pilgrim Health Care revealed a breach that affected over 2.1 million state client accounts. Harvard Pilgrim is a subsidiary of Point32Health, the second biggest health insurance company in the state, and provides coverage at dozens of hospitals in Massachusetts alone.
In an open letter written to clients after the hack, the nonprofit said hackers may have gotten access to files containing client names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, tax identification numbers, and patient clinical information, such as medical diagnoses and treatments.
“We want to assure you that we are taking this incident extremely seriously, and we deeply regret any inconvenience this incident may cause,” the group’s letter said.
A spokesperson for Harvard Pilgrim declined to speak about the breach.
Bad actors are becoming more sophisticated
Experts say it’s now far easier for bad actors to go online and buy hacking services at low cost, often using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
For-hire hacking groups do a lot of the technical work that everyday thieves would ordinarily not have the know-how to pull off, said Kevin Powers, director of the cybersecurity program at Boston College. Some of the hacking groups even offer affordable subscriptions.
For as little as $40 a month “you can get yourself a monthly subscription for a criminal enterprise,” Powers said.
He added that schemers also now use artificial intelligence services available on the dark web that are built to make hacking easy. Many hacking groups have begun using the AI services to make highly personalized phishing emails that are much harder to spot as fraudulent.
Even in cases where federal investigators manage to shut down a big hacking network, they will often reappear online, sometimes from a different country.
Hackers also have the benefit of bigger and easier targets to crack in recent years, as a growing number of companies are putting troves of data on poorly set up cloud servers with minimal protections.
“The bad guys are getting badder faster than the good guys are getting better,” Madnick of MIT said.
Some of those bad guys have even managed to break into Madnick’s accounts multiple times.
“You can be the most careful person in the world and there is no way to guarantee they won’t break in,” he said. “Don’t assume you are safe.”
Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com.
Police shot and killed a man who officials say rushed officers with a knife during a call in Lexington, Massachusetts, on Saturday.
Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said the situation started around 1:40 p.m. when Lexington police received a 911 call from a resident of Mason Street reporting that his son had injured himself with a knife.
Officers from the Lexington Police Department and officers from the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC), who were already in town for Patriots’ Day events, responded to the call.
Police were able to escort two other residents out of the home, initially leaving a 26-year-old man inside. According to Ryan, while officers were setting up outside, the man ran out of the home and approached officers with a large kitchen knife.
She added that police tried twice to use non-lethal force, but it was not effective in stopping him. The man was shot by a Wilmington police officer who is a member of NEMLEC. The man was pronounced dead on scene and the officer who fired that shot was taken to a local hospital as a precaution.
The man’s name has not been released.
Ryan said typically in a call like this where someone was described as harming themselves, officers would first try to separate anyone else to keep them out of danger, which was done, and then standard practice would be to try to wait outside.
“It would be their practice to just wait for the person to come out. In the terrible circumstances of today, he suddenly rushed the officers, still clutching the knife,” Ryan said.
The investigation is still in the preliminary stages and more information is expected in time. Ryan said her office will request a formal inquest from the court to review whether any criminal conduct has occurred, which is the standard process.
This happened around the same time as the annual Patriots’ Day Parade, and just hours after a reenactment of the Battle of Lexington, which drew large crowds to town.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Massachusetts
‘An impossible choice’: With little federal help to combat rising costs, Head Start looks to Massachusetts for more help – The Boston Globe
In Massachusetts, roughly 1,300 slots for children across Head Start’s 28 agencies have been eliminated in the last three years because federal funding has plateaued over that time, while the cost of running the program continues to rise, according to the Massachusetts Head Start Association. Nationally, Head Start enrollment dropped from 1.1 million kids in 2013 to around 785,000 in 2022, according to research by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“If they didn’t get into a Head Start program, they would be sitting at home,” said Brittany Acosta, a Head Start parent in Dorchester.
It’s teachers are drastically underpaid, and there’s a serious need for a rainy day-type fund should the federal government shut down again, the association says. As they’ve done in years past, state lawmakers have offered to provide financial relief, but the Massachusetts Head Start Association’s request for 3 percent above the amount it received last year, an additional $4.6 million to help its staff keep up with the state’s rising cost of living, so far has not been allocated.
Last year, President Trump’s leaked budget proposal revealed he considered eliminating Head Start entirely. Then, in the summer, he cut off Head Start enrollment for immigrants without legal status. And during the fall’s government shutdown, four Head Start centers in Massachusetts closed because they couldn’t access their funding.
Trump’s latest budget proposal shows a fourth year without increasing funding for the program, which was established in the mid-1960s.
Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, said the program doesn’t want to eliminate more child slots than it already has, but paying teachers a competitive salary is equally important in order to keep them from leaving for higher paying jobs. Head Start teachers make under $50,000 annually compared to over $85,000 for the average Massachusetts kindergarten teacher.
“It’s an impossible choice,” Haimowitz said. “When we reduce the size of our programs, we’re not reducing the size of the need.”
Massachusetts is one of few states that supplements federal funding for Head Start, and last year it increased the program’s state grant from $5 million to $20 million, adding to the $189 million in federal aid it receives in this state.
“We can’t run a program without giving staff a raise for three years,” Haimowitz said. “Our next fight now is not just for survival, but it’s for thriving and growth.”
The Massachusetts House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday released its budget, which doesn’t grant Head Start’s request of a 3 percent boost. But state Representative Christopher Worrell filed an amendment for additional funding. Worrell, whose district covers parts of Dorchester and Roxbury, said he loves Head Start’s embrace of culture, recalling one visit to a center where he could smell staff cooking stew chicken, a traditional Caribbean dish.
“I’ve been to dozens of schools throughout the district, and you don’t get that home-cooked meal,” Worrell said. “[The state is] stepping up and doing the best we can with what we have.”
At the Action for Boston Community Development’s Head Start and Early Head Start center in Dorchester, the children of Classroom 7 arrived one Monday morning and dove into bins of magnetic tiles before their teachers, Paola Polanco and Leolina Rasundar Chinnappa, served breakfast. Acosta dropped off her 4-year-old daughter, Violeta, before reporting to her teaching position at the center, where several other Head Start parents also work.
“It’s important for all Head Start parents to have the opportunity to give their child an experience in a learning environment before they actually start kindergarten,” Acosta said.
Beyond providing early education and care to children of low-income families, from birth to age 5, the program helps them access other resources, including mental health services, SNAP benefits, homelessness assistance, and employment opportunities.
It also serves as daycare for parents who might not be able to afford it, while they’re at work.
Research has shown the importance of preschool in a child’s development with one 2023 study, focused on Boston public preschools, finding that it improves student behavior and increases the likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment.
For Rickencia Clerveaux and Christopher Mclean, the Dorchester Head Start center is the only place they feel comfortable sending their 3-year-old son, Shontz, who is on the autism spectrum. Shontz’s stimming — repetitive movements that stimulate the senses — has reduced, and his speech has improved since he joined the center in 2024, Clerveaux said.
His parents say he’s also come out of his shell. Mclean now drops his son off and gets a simple “bye” as Shontz joins his classmates, he said.
He and Clerveaux said they appreciate the specialized attention Shontz can receive from teachers, such as when staff identified that Shontz might have hearing issues. His parents were able to follow up with their doctor and get Shontz to have surgery to improve his hearing.
“It’s a safe net for parents,” Clerveaux said. “There’s so many ways that him being here helps him grow better.”
Without Head Start, Clerveaux said a lot of pressure would be put on parents to find care for their children, “knowing that they’re already struggling or not getting the ends to meet.”
“That’s a burden for everybody in the community,” she said. “If there’s no funding, there’s no daycare and parents cannot work.”
Lauren Albano can be reached at lauren.albano@globe.com. Follow her on X @LaurenAlbano_.
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