Recent HIPAA News
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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 [...]
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Researchers at Carbon Black have identified a new Shlayer malware variant that targets Mac computers running MacOS versions 10.10.5 to 10.14.3. The researchers first identified the OrA new Shlayer malware variant a year ago. Mac [...]
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The Oregon Health Information Property Act proposes that individuals may give permission to their healthcare providers to sell their health data and receive financial compensation from the transaction. Democrat Senator Floyd Prozanski proposed Senate [...]
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A new Business Email Compromise (BEC) attack targeting high-level executives has been identified. BEC campaigns are a form of phishing attack in which the cybercriminal impersonates a high-ranking member of an organisation, such as CEO [...]
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Dropbox is a popular file hosting service used by over 500 million people worldwide. It is becoming increasingly popular with businesses and organisations as a way of storing files, as it reduces costs by reducing [...]
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The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) has issued an alert about vulnerabilities found in the IDenticard PremiSys access control system. ICS-CERT, a governmental organisation that works to reduce the risk of cybercrime [...]
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Aetna has agreed to pay the California Attorney General $935,000 for a 2017 breach which resulted in the exposure of the HIV status of 1,991 Californian residents. In July 2017, Aetna, a health insurer based [...]
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The Supreme Court of Illinois has issued a new ruling which allows individuals whose privacy has been violated through a breach of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act to take legal action against a private [...]
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Radware has released a report that reveals the cost of a cyber attack to businesses has increased by 52% in the past year. Radware researchers surveyed 790 professionals across the globe in a variety of [...]
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HIPAA Rules requires organizations in the healthcare industry place adequate safeguards on sensitive data they hold to ensure that the integrity and security of protected healthcare information (PHI) is maintained. Many of these stipulations are [...]
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The Governor of Massachusetts has signed in a new law that updates the state’s existing data breach laws. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed the law, named “An Act relative to consumer protection from security breaches” [...]
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A Georgia-based paediatric cardiologist was sentenced to 6 months’ probation after pleading guilty to violating HIPAA legislation by disclosing patient PHI to an unauthorised organisation. Dr Eduardo Montana, 55, plead guilty at the Department of [...]
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An alert has been issued to IT service providers and their customers about an increase in Chinese malicious cyber activity. The warning was issued by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) United States Computer Emergency Readiness [...]
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The results of an investigation into a data breach at SingHealth, Singapore’s largest health network, highlight the importance of even the most basic cybersecurity practices for organisations across the globe. The data breach at SingHealth [...]
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The National Counterintelligence and Security Centre (NCSC) has launched a public awareness campaign with the aim of improving the response of businesses to cybersecurity threats. NCSC, part of the Office of the Director of National [...]
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A study has been published which investigated how data breaches affect hospital advertising expenditure decisions. The study, entitled “Understanding the Relationship Between Data Breaches and Hospital Advertising Expenditures” was published by Sung J. Choi, PhD [...]
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A cybersecurity blog has reported that a new vishing scam in which the scammer pretends to be an employee of Apple Inc. has been uncovered. Vishing is a less common form of phishing attack. The [...]
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Microsoft has issued patches for 51 vulnerabilities this January 2019 Patch Tuesday. Of the vulnerabilities, 7 were rated critical. Unlike the four preceding months, none vulnerabilities were identified as being actively exploited in the wild. [...]
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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a critically important piece of legislation created to introduce minimum security and privacy standards in the healthcare industry. HIPAA is a federal law, organisations [...]
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The San Diego Unified School District has announced that a phishing attack on its network has affected more than half a million of its staff and current and former students. The San Diego Unified School [...]
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The Clearwater CyberIntelligence Institute (CCI) has announce that it has identified the three most critical cybersecurity risks facing the organisations in the healthcare industry. CCI, part of Clearwater Compliance, a leading healthcare cyber risk management [...]
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A flaw has been identified in Orange Livebox ADSL modems that causes the modems to “leak” WiFi credentials. Orange Livebox is an ADSL wireless router used to deliver broadband services to customers of Orange S.A., [...]
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The final version of the Risk Management Framework (RMF 2.0) has been released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The [...]
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Patients affected by a data security incident at LifeBridge Health in March 2018 have filed a lawsuit against the facility. LifeBridge Health, a nonprofit healthcare corporation in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered that malware had infected one [...]
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The United States Senate has introduced a bill that would introduce new protections for the personal information of individuals online. The bill, entitled the Data Care Act, was proposed by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) on [...]
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The University of Vermont Health Network has revealed that a data security incident at the facility has affected approximately 32,000 patients. The breach was discovered on October 18, 2018. An unauthorised third-party had gained access [...]
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The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) has issued an advisory about a vulnerability that has been identified in certain Medtronic CareLink and Encore Programmers. ICS-CERT, an organisation created to identify and tackle problems [...]
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IntSights, a security threat intelligence services reviewer, has released a recent study entitled “Chronic [Cyber] Pain: Exposed & Misconfigured Databases in the Healthcare Industry”. The report highlights how easily accessible huge amounts of healthcare data [...]
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The University of Maryland Medical System has recently announced that it has been the victim of a malware attack on its network. The University of Maryland Medical System is a private, not-for-profit corporation that operates [...]
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In late November, the Department of Justice indicted two Iranian threat actors over the use of SamSam ransomware. However, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are urging organisations that the threat [...]
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The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) have called for officials to reform the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The calls for reform were made on [...]
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The Attorney Generals of a dozen states have filed a lawsuit against Medical Informatics Engineering, a healthcare software and systems developer and NoMoreClipboard, an electronic platform for personal health records. The lawsuit is over the [...]
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The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has announced the winners of its Easy EHR Issues Reporting Challenge. ONC is a federal entity that coordinates [...]
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The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report questioning the integrity of security systems at two managed care organizations (MCOs) in Arizona following security audits of the [...]
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Allergy Associates of Hartford, P.C. (Allergy Associates) has agreed to pay a fine of $125,000 to the Office of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights to settle alleged violations of the Health Insurance Portability [...]
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The U.S. Department of Justice has released an update on the investigation of the threat actors behind the SamSam ransomware attacks. SamSam ransomware is a custom infection used in targeted attacks against the healthcare industry [...]
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The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), a non-profit organisation dedicated to developing biomedical and health informatics to improve patient care, recently called on the Trump administration to reform data privacy rules in order to better [...]
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Researchers at Michigan State University and John Hopkins University have released a report containing their analysis of data breaches reported to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) between October [...]