BURLINGTON – Global lab testing and life science firm LabCorp has reported a possible breach of its network and has notified “relevant authorities.”

The FBI told Triad TV station WFMY that it was aware of “reports of a ransomware attack” involving LabCorp.

“The FBI is aware of reports of a ransomware attack involving LabCorp’s network system,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

“We are monitoring the situation, but cannot comment on whether or not the FBI is involved in any investigation.”

Citing an update from LabCorp, the Triad Business Journal said the company acknowledged “the activity was subsequently determined to be a new variant of ransomware. LabCorp promptly took certain systems offline as part of its comprehensive response to contain and remove the ransomware from its system.”

In a securities filing on Monday, the Burlington-based company said “suspicious activity” was detected last weekend.

As a result of shutting down “certain systems,” LabCorp said some patient test results and customer access was affected. LabCorp is used by healthcare providers for tests for millions of patients across North Carolina and the United States.

Its’ Covance Drug Development group apparently was not affected.

“LabCorp immediately took certain systems offline as part of its comprehensive response to contain the activity,” the company said in the filing.
“This temporarily affected test processing and customer access to test results on or over the weekend. Work has been ongoing to restore full system functionality as quickly as possible, testing operations have substantially resumed today, and we anticipate that additional systems and functions will be restored through the next several days. Some customers of LabCorp Diagnostics may experience brief delays in receiving results as we complete that process.”
The company also said “there is no evidence of unauthorized transfer or misuse of data.”