Genea cyber attack: One of Australia’s largest IVF providers takes systems offline after breach

One of the country’s largest IVF providers was forced to take its systems offline after it was targeted in a suspected cyber attack.

Genea Fertility on Wednesday said it was responding to a cyber incident after “identifying suspicious activity on our network”.

Alarmingly, the fertility provider confirmed an “unauthorised third party” had accessed Genea data, with the company yet to ascertain the nature of the information accessed.

“As soon as we detected the incident, we took immediate steps to contain the incident and secure our systems,” the company said in a statement.

“Out of an abundance of caution, this included taking some of our systems and servers offline while we investigated the incident. These are now being restored while we continue our investigation.”

A Genea spokesperson said the Australian Cyber Security Centre has been notified of the incident as investigations continue.

“We have since engaged cyber experts to assist us with our response and investigation and we are liaising with the Australian Cyber Security Centre,” the spokesperson said.

“The protection of our staff and patients’ information is our utmost priority. We apologise for any concern or inconvenience that this incident has caused and will provide patients with relevant updates as we learn more.”

Genea Fertility has since set up an email dedicated to responding to patient concerns, with an automatic reply that apologises to clients and reassures they will receive a response.

“Thank you for contacting the Genea Fertility cyber incident team,” it says.

“We sincerely apologise for any concern this incident may cause you and want to reassure you that we take your privacy and the security of your data very seriously. This email is the best way for us to respond to your questions or concerns. We will respond as soon as possible. Thank you.”

The company said it is “working hard to ensure that there is minimal disruption to treatment”, reassuring patients that no contact meant no change to current treatment schedules.

“We will communicate with relevant individuals if our investigation identifies any evidence that their personal information has been impacted,” it said.

It comes just days after the health provider experienced phone outages and encouraged clients to get in touch via email instead. It remains unclear whether the two are linked.

Genea Fertility has more than 20 locations nationwide, including one in Perth, with thousands of patients accessing a range of fertility and genetic services.