Field Service Engineer

The Medtronic breach shows why healthcare data risk lasts for years. Medtronic reportedly notified customers after a ShinyHunters-linked breach affecting personal and medical information, underscoring the long tail of healthcare exposure. EC Evolving Cyber Jul 4, 2026 Reading Time SecurityWeek reported this week that a Medtronic data breach impacted 3.8 million people, with ShinyHunters accessing corporate IT systems in April and stealing personal and medical information. Medtronic also notified affected customers after personal data was exposed to an unauthorized third party. Healthcare breaches are different from ordinary account leaks because the exposed data is harder to replace. A password can be reset. A credit card can be reissued. Medical history, patient identifiers, diagnosis context, treatment relationships, and insurance-linked data can follow a person for years. Why healthcare data is so valuable. Healthcare records combine identity, financial, and deeply personal information. That makes them useful for several forms of abuse: * Identity theft and synthetic identity fraud. * Insurance fraud and medical billing scams. * Targeted phishing that references real care relationships. * Extortion or reputational pressure using sensitive health context. * Long-term resale because medical details do not expire quickly. For attackers, healthcare data can be monetized in more ways than a simple credential dump. The ShinyHunters factor. ShinyHunters has repeatedly been associated with large data theft and extortion activity. The group is notable because many modern breaches do not require exotic malware or zero-day exploitation. Access may come through stolen credentials, cloud misconfigurations, third-party systems, exposed applications, or social engineering. That is the uncomfortable lesson for healthcare organizations and medical technology companies: the most damaging breach may start as an ordinary IT access failure. What affected individuals should do. People notified in a healthcare breach should assume the risk is long term. * Watch for medical billing notices, insurance claims, or provider communications that do not match real activity. * Freeze credit where available. * Be suspicious of calls or emails that reference medical details to build trust. * Use strong, unique passwords and phishing-resistant MFA on healthcare portals. * Keep breach notification letters and case numbers for future disputes. What healthcare organizations should do. Healthcare security programs need to treat patient data as a high-value asset wherever it lives, not only inside clinical systems. * Map where patient and customer data is stored across corporate IT, support tools, analytics systems, cloud storage, and vendors. * Enforce least privilege and short-lived access for sensitive datasets. * Monitor large exports, unusual queries, and abnormal access by support or admin accounts. * Test incident response plans that include patient notification, regulator communication, and call-center load. * Review third-party and SaaS integrations that can access patient information. The takeaway. Healthcare breaches are trust events. They do not end when notifications are mailed or when credit monitoring is offered. The data can remain useful to criminals long after the incident response team closes the ticket. Sources.

'Live Like Sam' becomes guiding principle for many who knew him or later learned about him. * By Michael J. Breazeale Special to the Record-Eagle * Jul 3, 2026 TRAVERSE CITY - Sam DeKuiper, a mechanical engineer at Thompson Surgical Instruments, died in a fiery car crash on May 3, 2024, at the age of 22. In the months preceding his death, Sam and his team were working to create a medical device used to improve anatomy stabilization in spinal surgery. That device, which began its first clinical applications a few weeks ago, is called a stability add-on module - or S.A.M. It was named for Sam DeKuiper. Sam had been working at Thompson full-time for about four months when Chris Martin, vice president of Thompson's Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), asked for a hand with a new project. "I needed help on an OEM project for Medtronic, one of our customers," Martin said. "I asked Sam to go through some technical options for them." Sam quickly came back with a proposal that Martin sent directly to Medtronic. "We won that project," Martin said. "And Sam was going to be its engineer. We were going to use his skills to develop a new product." Medtronic recently launched their "stealth access platform," an enabling robot technology that allows surgeons to place hardware for spinal fixation and deformity correction, Martin said. "The key with a robot is knowing that the anatomy is not going to move. The robot will go where you tell it to go, but it is important that the spine doesn't move during that process." So Sam and his coworkers at Thompson created hardware fixtures to ensure tissue stabilization. "We were calling it a stability add-on module," Martin said. "Medtronic created the Stealth Access Platform. Sam helped us figure out how to best make the connection from its spinous process clamps and the operating table. That allows Medtronic's robot to accurately place screws [into the surgery site]." Sam showed so much potential that it was an easy decision to assign him to this important project, he said. Sam's mother, Brenda DeKuiper, also works at Thompson, and they frequently drove to work together. "He'd talk to me about all these different work plans and ideas he had," she said. "His brain was always going." When Martin told Brenda that Thompson would be naming their add-on module after Sam, she started crying. "I told Chris it would be an honor - even just the thought was an honor," she said. "I think Sam would be really excited about this project (coming to completion). "He would be extremely proud of the fact that (something he worked on) will be helping people. I'm sure he will be looking down and seeing the impact this project will have on so many lives. That would make him happy. To know that others might get to live because of something he created. Even though he's gone, he will continue to have an impact. "The number of lives he will help is immeasurable. There's no way to know how many, but it will be a lot." Live like Sam. Martin first met Sam when he was studying engineering at Lawrence Tech and looking for an internship at Thompson. "He spent his first summer with us interning with our manufacturing and quality team," Martin said. "His second summer was spent with our engineering team. I quickly realized how much potential he had." That potential was directly related to Sam's character, he said. "He had integrity, kindness, and worked really hard," Martin said. "He was incredibly smart, with pure intellectual skill and a technical mind. He was extremely talented, but I think his work ethic and character were his biggest assets. Sam was going to go far." He was quiet leader, Brenda recalled. "That's how his teachers and teammates described him," she said. "He didn't have to do it boisterously. He led by example. When Sam did something, the others would follow because they looked up to him." Sam played baseball at Lawrence Tech. Before that, he played baseball and was quarterback of Traverse City West's football team. Meanwhile, he finished all of his college math courses for engineering while he was still in high school. He was young for his grade. He always played two years up, according to Brenda, "So when he was 14 he played with the 16U team." "We always told Sam that if he's not getting A's, he can't do sports," Brenda said. "He had a passion for sports. He was a walking sports encyclopedia. But we never had to tell him to do his homework." As a kid, Sam loved to take household items apart "and make new things out of them," Brenda said. "He'd get erector sets and those kinds of things for Christmas. That's how his mind worked." While sports and engineering were important aspects of Sam's life, Brenda said that faith always took center stage, and informed his every interaction with others. Brenda highlighted - from an undated paper written by Sam that was found after his death - the role that faith played in her son's life. He titled it "Healthy Relationships." "(...) The most important relationship is the one with Jesus Christ," Sam wrote. "By having a healthy relationship with God, you are able to have ones with others. Without it, the relationships that you will have with the people you encounter will not hold meaning, will not make you a better person, and will not bring you what you want in your life and in life." Brenda noted the message's alignment with two Bible verses that "encapsulate the essence of 'Live like Sam" - James 1:13 ("Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom."), and Philippians 2:3-4 ("Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others."). "The most important relationship is the one with Jesus Christ," Brenda said. "If you have that, you have it all." Brenda said that Sam's presence, demeanor, and calm personality could change the feeling in any room he entered. "Gosh, if more of us could be like Sam..." Martin said. "You hear that over and over again. He was such a fine person, an incredibly kind individual." In early May 2024, several of Sam's old teammates were graduating from Lawrence Tech, and he had made plans to join them. "Sam had been working overtime all week," Brenda said. "I tried to get him to leave work early so he could get on the road and miss some of the traffic, but he was given two more drawings to do. And Sam wasn't one to leave until his job was done." At about 4:30 p.m. May 3 in Mayfield Township, Nicholas Schram of Imlay City attempted to pass a vehicle in a no-passing zone on County Road 633. That's when Schram's red truck crashed head-on into a Ford Taurus and caught fire in a ditch, according to police reports. Sam, who was alone in the Taurus, was pronounced dead at the scene. Schram, in his late 20s, is now serving a prison term of 24 to 60 months for two counts of reckless driving causing serious injury. Legacy. On May 11, 2024, 53 cars and a packed charter bus proceeded from Sam's funeral at New Hope Community Church to his burial at Grand Traverse Memorial Gardens. They were joined by seven police cars, only three of which were on duty, according to Brenda. "The other four were there for Sam. Two fire stations blocked intersections with their trucks, and two conservation officers stood at attention as Sam went by. Sam had high school friends who flew to his service from Washington, Utah, Arizona, California, Canada, South Carolina. There were over 1,000 people at his memorial service, and about 700 people at his funeral." Sam had been dating Samantha Schermerhorn, daughter of Munson neurosurgeon Dr. Thomas C. Schermerhorn, for almost six years. "He was going to ask her to marry him later that year," Brenda said. "If Munson purchases S.A.M., or if Dr. Schermerhorn were to work at a different hospital, he would have a chance to use S.A.M. in his surgeries," she added. "How profound is that?" Martin said that losing someone as young and talented as Sam was "the hardest thing." "But more than that, Sam was just such a good kid, such a good human," he said. "The [Thompson] team pulled together. A lot of the team members just put their heads down and turned into their work. But there were a lot of quiet days." Thompson finished their S.A.M. design process about six months ago, Martin said. "Medtronic got FDA clearance about a month and a half ago, and started their first clinical (applications with S.A.M.) a few weeks ago," he added. "It will help a lot of patients. "That's the legacy I'd like to see for Sam - that he helped create something that will help people live healthier, pain-free lives."