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Quest Diagnostics confirms patient data exposed in lab system breach

Published

The US lab testing company says someone gained unauthorised access to its Quanum Lab Services Manager platform and that some patient health and personal data was accessed. Quest is still working out how many people are affected.

Quest Diagnostics said it first found the unauthorised access on 21 October and paused access to the platform. The company is based in Secaucus, New Jersey. It told investors about the incident in a filing on 22 October.

Quest said core business operations are not affected and that clients who do not use the platform should not see testing delays. It said it expects to restore full function of the platform as soon as Friday. It paused two other systems, Essential Insights and LabHQ, as a precaution, and said no data was accessed on them.

Quest said the incident is unlikely to match the scale of an earlier breach, because only certain customers use the affected system. That earlier breach, which ran from August 2018 to March 2019, exposed the health data of about 11.9 million patients. No threat group has claimed responsibility for the new incident.

Ross Filipek, chief information security officer at Corsica Technologies, said such records could give criminals material for identity fraud or convincing messages about someone's care.

Key facts

Who
Quest Diagnostics (lab testing company that confirmed the breach); Ross Filipek (CISO at Corsica Technologies)
What
Quest Diagnostics confirmed that patients' personal and health data was compromised during a breach. The description says Quest is the latest in a series of healthcare technology companies hacked in recent months.
When
23 October 2026
Where
Secaucus, New Jersey, New Jersey
Status
Reported

Elections Hot

What you need to know

Voting in the 2026 Local Government Elections is under way at 23,696 stations, and the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) reported a smooth start on 4 November. Stations opened at 7am and close at 9pm, and by 10am preliminary figures showed 3,523,691 voters had cast ballots.

There were problems: unused ballot papers were stolen from Mnyameni Secondary School near Durban, police opened a case, and the IEC relieved the station staff of duty. Some voters in Tshwane said they were turned away for wearing party shirts, but the IEC denied this and said only mayoral candidates' entourages were barred.

ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe told members not to query the results or discredit the IEC, while the IEC said false online claims show routine procedures as fraud.

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US mid-terms Heating up

What you need to know

Democrats won back both the US House and Senate in the midterm elections held on 3 November, according to media projections. Exit polls showed voters were angry about high prices and the direction of the country, and rebuked President Donald Trump.

Before the vote, US forces struck targets on Qeshm Island in Iran, while Republicans struggled to defend the war against Iran on the campaign trail. Iranian officials said US voters rejected the war, and Tehran stayed on high alert for possible new US strikes.

Markets reacted, with the dollar hitting a one-month low and the rand firming to around R16.55, as analysts pointed to fears of gridlock in Washington.

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AI Cooling

What you need to know

Nvidia has told its cloud computing clients to sell at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese companies, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. Anthropic said it has committed to spend close to $900bn on AI infrastructure, and that its computing costs are rising faster than its revenues.

Elsewhere, reports from unnamed sources say OpenAI's latest funding round is falling short of expectations, and a judge let the NAACP pollution case against xAI proceed. In South Africa, the VAST AI investment scheme went offline on 30 October after withdrawals marked approved did not arrive, according to a news investigation.

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