Recent HIPAA News
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A recent Forescout study highlighted the poor condition of healthcare cybersecurity. The study showed the over reliance of the healthcare industry on legacy software, the extensive use of vulnerable protocols, and the lack of security [...]
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American Baptist Homes of the Midwest (ABHM), which provides assisted living and assisted care facilities throughout the U.S Midwest, announced a ransomware attack on its systems causing a security breach. The attack was launched around [...]
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A new analysis report by the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) highlights a number of the prevalent risks and vulnerabilities related to switching from on-premise to cloud-based mail services like Microsoft Office 365. [...]
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The Southeastern Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (SCADD) located in Lebanon, CT had a ransomware attack that caused considerable file encryption. SCADD experienced network problems that led to the discovery of the ransomware attack [...]
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A sexual assault victim filed a lawsuit against Atchison Hospital in Kansas because allegedly a hospital x-ray technician shared sensitive data to her attacker regarding her treatment at the hospital. As per the Kansas City [...]
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The 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report has been released. It gives a detailed summary of data breaches that public and private entities reported all over the world. The extensive report gives exhaustive insights and [...]
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Verity Health System’s St. Vincent Medical Center discovered the compromise of a web email account because of a phishing attack. The breach took place on March 15, 2019 where a hospital pathologist’s email account was [...]
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The website owner of Bodybuilding.com, a website about bodybuilding and fitness, reported a security breach that could have caused the access of client and personnel data by unauthorized persons. Under HIPAA, this kind of breach [...]
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After the Inmediata breach that caused the exposure of PHI, the company sent by mail notification letters to the people affected by the breach. However many people reported that they got notification letters addressed to [...]
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Facebook is applying some changes to Facebook Groups that talk about health conditions. This move was prompted because of the criticism on Facebook Groups that despite its being offered as private and confidential, third parties [...]
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A vulnerability was found in the Philips Tasy EMR system. An attacker can take advantage of the vulnerability and transmit unexpected data to the system that could execute an arbitrary code, alter data flow, impact [...]
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The U.S Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) released its yearly evaluation of the HHS to ascertain compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2014 (FISMA). Ernst & [...]
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The DICOM image format has been available for about 30 years. It has a design ‘flaw’ that hackers could exploit to add malware in image files. If that happens, the protected health information (PHI) will [...]
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A notification of enforcement discretion issued by the Department of Health and Human Services about the civil monetary penalties applied whenever there are HIPAA Rules violations discovered will reduce the maximum financial penalty in three [...]
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The Washington legislature made a unanimous decision to pass HB 1071 / SB 5064, a new data breach notification law. The only the bill needs is the signature of Washington Governor Jay Inslee. The law [...]
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The King County Superior Court lately agreed to a $4.7 million settlement to pay back the people whose personal data were stolen in a breach at Washington State University in April 2017. Portable hard drives [...]
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Three breaches involving patients’ protected health information (PHI) due to email hacking were reported. The three hacking incidents affected a total of 8,635 patients. The first breach happened in the Center for Sight and Hearing [...]
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The HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has published a second draft of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) and is accepting comments on the revised material. The objective [...]
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The highly sensitive data of patients who had received treatment at addiction rehabilitation centers were discovered to be publicly accessible online because of an unsecured database. There were around 4.91 million records in the database, [...]
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Gulf Coast Pain Consultants, also called Clearway Pain Solutions Institute, found out that its EMR system was accessed by an unauthorized individual. A breach investigation which started on February 20, 2019 revealed that a variety [...]
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993 beneficiaries of Medicaid or have obtained services from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) living in Ohio received notification that unauthorized persons potentially viewed some of their protected health information (PHI) [...]
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A malware was installed on the systems of Riverplace Counseling Center in Anoka, MN, which resulted to the access of the protected health information (PHI) of patients by unauthorized persons. The counseling center discovered the [...]
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The website of Blue Cross of Idaho was hacked resulting to the access of its member portal by an unauthorized person who viewed the protected health information (PHI) of some members. Blue Cross of Idaho [...]
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The consultancy company CynergisTek conducted a study recently and found that healthcare organizations aren’t in conformity to the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) controls. CynergisTek studied the NIST CSF [...]
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The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) received another report of a phishing attack that resulted to the compromise of an employee’s email account. This security breach transpired on or before March 26, 2018. This [...]
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Massachusetts Baystate Health had a phishing attack which impacted the protected health information (PHI) of 12,000 patients. A few employees had their email accounts compromised between February 7 to March 7, 2019. When Baystate Health [...]
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A phishing attack on Palmetto Health, which is now called Prisma Health, allowed unauthorized persons to access several email accounts. Palmetto Health employees received email messages that have a malicious hyperlink. When the employees clicked [...]
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Can Docusign be used with electronic protected health information (ePHI) by healthcare organizations without violating HIPAA Rules? Is DocuSign compliant with HIPAA? DocuSign is a provider that offers electronic signature and transaction management services. DocuSign [...]
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Amazon announced a new service that allows healthcare professionals to de-identify medical images by automatically removing any identifying protected health information (PHI) presented in the images. Pictures taken in medical settings often contain personally identifiable [...]
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A group of 81 female patients of Sharp HealthCare and Sharp Grossmont Hospital have filed a lawsuit against the facility for severe breaches in patient privacy. The lawsuit alleges that the hospital secretly recorded video [...]
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The number of health and fitness apps and devices has exploded in recent years. These technologies offer the user assistance in achieving a healthier lifestyle by offering personalised guidance or helping the user track any [...]
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A patient who found her discovered that her private medical information was available on social media platforms is suing the Northwestern Medicine Regional Medical Group for PHI exposure. Earlier this month, Gina Graziano discovered that [...]
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UCLA Health has settled a class action lawsuit filed by victims of a 2014 data breach for $7.5 million. The UCLA Health breach was one of the largest data breaches in history. Hackers accessed the [...]
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Beazley Breach Response Services have released a new report indicating that 71% of ransomware attacks target small and medium businesses (SMBs). Ransomware is malware variant which denies the user access to their device, or individual [...]
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Security researchers have identified two vulnerabilities in the Conexus telemetry protocol used by Medtronic MyCarelink monitors, CareLink monitors, CareLink 2090 programmers, and 17 implanted cardiac devices. One vulnerability is rated as ‘critical’, and the other [...]
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The University of Washington is alerting nearly a million patients of a data breach that resulted in unauthorised individuals being able to access their protected health information (PHI) through search engines online. The error was [...]
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Senator Gary Farmer (D-FL) and Representative Bobby DuBose (D-FL) have proposed new bills concerning consumers’ data privacy rights over their biometric data. The Florida Biometric Information Privacy Act aims to “establish requirements and restrictions on [...]
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Sharecare Health Data Services has reported that an unauthorised individual gained access to sensitive information stored in their systems. Sharecare Health Data Services (SHDS), based in San Diego, provides secure electronic exchange and medical records [...]
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Phishing attacks against large organisations have become increasingly common in recent years. Sectors that deal with sensitive information, such as the healthcare sector and financial industries, are particularly at risk of attack. Credit card numbers [...]
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The 2019 edition of the Verizon Mobile Security Index has been released, showing the significant risk that mobile device breaches pose to the healthcare industry. The report surveyed eight industry sectors to assess the data [...]
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Columbia Surgical Specialists have announced a ransomware attack on their facility has potentially compromised the PHI of up to 400,000 patients. Columbia Surgical Specialists (CSS), based in Spokane, Washington, discovered the attack on January 9, [...]
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Marketo is Marketing Automation software focused on account-based marketings. In April 2018, Adobe purchased Marketo for $4.75 billion. The software has received widespread praise, such as featuring on the Wall Street Journal’s “Next Big Thing” [...]
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Senator Catherine Cortex Masto (D-NV) has introduced a new bill which aims to tackle concerns consumers face about the collection and use of their data. Senator Catherine Cortex Masto’s “Data Privacy Act” calls for organisations [...]
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Kentucky Counselling Center has announced that a data breach has resulted in the exposure of 16,440 patient data files. On January 4, 2019, a former employee notified Kentucky Counselling Center (KCC) that they had received [...]
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Rutland Medical Center has announced it has experienced a data breach after an unauthorised individual gained access to the email accounts of several employees. An employee of Rutland Medical Center noticed the breach after realising [...]
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UConn Health has announced that a recent phishing attack has compromised approximately 326,000 patient files. UConn Health is the branch of the University of Connecticut that oversees clinical care, advanced biomedical research, and academic education [...]
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Drupal has released an update which corrects a critical vulnerability in the Drupal CMS. Drupal is a free and open-source content management framework and provides the back-end framework for approximately 2.3% of websites worldwide. The [...]
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Deep Instinct has announced that it has identified a new phishing campaign is spreading Separ malware. Researchers at Deep Instinct identified the last campaign in January 2019. The threat actors behind this version of [...]
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The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has released a guide to mobile device security. The guide entitled NIST Special Publication 1800-4 Mobile Device Security: Cloud & Hybrid Builds provides practical advice for organisations looking to [...]
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Akamai has announced the discovery of a new phishing attack that spoofs a Google webpage. Larry Cashdollar, working at Akamai, a cloud service provider, discovered the fraud campaign. Like many other phishing campaigns, this attack [...]