HIPAA Enforcement News

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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., […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is a US government organisation that builds and shares solutions to potential cybersecurity threats faced by US businesses. The NCCoE is a part of the National Institute of […]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has drafted a Request for Information (RFI) to assess HIPAA Rules may be hindering patient information sharing. The move is in repose to complaints that healthcare providers […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act has been passed by unanimously by Congress on November 13, 2018.  The new legislation will allow the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will be forming a new agency […]

This week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) has announced an update on the recent HealthCare.gov website breach. Last month, hackers gained access to a health insurance system that interacts with the HealthCare.gov website. […]

Inova Health System, a non-profit health organisation based in Falls Church, Virginia, has announced that it has experienced a data breach. The protected health information (PHI) of over 12,000 of its patients may have been […]

The HHS’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) has published the findings of an audit of the FDA’s policies and procedures for addressing medical device cybersecurity in the postmarket phase.   The US Food and Drug Administration […]

Best Medical Transcription, a transcriptionist vendor, has been fined by the New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal for breaching HIPAA in 2016. The violation occurred while it was working as a business associate of […]

A North Carolina medical center has announced that a phishing attack on its systems has resulted in the protected health information (PHI) of up to 20,000 being compromised.  Catawba Valley Medical Center (CVMC), based in […]

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has officially launched its Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3). Opened on October 29, 2018 by Deputy Secretary of the HHS, Eric Hargan, the center is […]

September 2018 Healthcare Data Breach Report The number of healthcare data breaches reported to the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for September 2018 is down to 25-a decrease of […]

The Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services (CMS) has announced that it was recently the victim of a cyberattack that has resulted in approximately 75,000 consumer records being accessed by unauthorised individuals.  On October 13 […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released an advise about the vulnerabilities of a number of Medtronic implantable cardiac device programmers that hackers can potentially exploit enabling them to alter the programmer’s functionality when […]

Two healthcare companies experienced email-related breaches recently. The first company, Biomarin Pharmaceutical located in Novato, CA, found out that two email accounts of its employees became compromised because of a phishing attack allowing the attacker […]

Michigan Medicine is sending notification letters to 3,600 patients regarding the impermissible disclosure of some of their protected health information (PHI). The Michigan Medicine Development Office conducted a fundraising project and mailed letters to a […]

Lambda Legal filed a legal case for a data breach victim who, together with 92 lower-income HIV positive individuals, had their highly sensitive protected health information (PHI) stolen by unauthorized people from the California AIDS […]

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG) would like the HHS and the healthcare industry to have greater consciousness of its operation to fight cyberthreats and part of its […]

A staff of KHOU 11, a CBS-affiliated television station, found abandoned documents that include the protected health information (PHI) of roughly 1,800 patients in a street in Midtown, Houston. The documents had information like the […]

Gold Coast Health Plan located in Camarillo, CA told its 37,000 plan members that cyber attackers potentially accessed some of their protected health information (PHI) because one of its employees’ email account was compromised. The […]

The ECRI Institute is a non-profit company that studies new techniques to enhance patient care. It has recently published an annual list that includes the top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2019. The goal of […]

Phishing is one of the leading causes of healthcare data breaches. Phishers are able to access healthcare data from email accounts. In many incidents, those email accounts contain considerable volumes of highly sensitive protected health […]

AggregateIQ is an analytics company based in Canada that acted for the Vote Leave campaign. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued the first UK GDPR notice to AggregateIQ in connection with business executed in that […]

Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, which is a not-for-profit community hospital based in Ogdensburg, New York, terminated several employees because they accessed patient medical records even though they do not have authorization to do so. The hospital […]

Ohio Living, which is a firm providing life plan communities and home health services, discovered that an unauthorized individual accessed some of its employees’ email accounts. On July 10, 2018, Ohio Living noticed the suspicious […]

In April 2018, a 65-year old former gynecologist named Rita Luthra from Massachusetts, Longmeadow, was charged with criminal violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule and federal investigation obstruction. In September 19, 2018, the judge announced […]

The Massachusetts attorney general fined UMass Memorial Health Care the amount of $230,000 for its HIPAA violations with respect to two data breaches which compromised the protected health information (PHI) of over 15,000 state locals. […]

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) fined three hospitals the amount of $999,000 for allowing an ABC film crew to shoot a video footage of patients for its Boston […]

In June 2018, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has been passed by the California legislature and thus important changes on how the state law safeguards consumer privacy are expected. The new consumer privacy protections […]

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (OIG) has published a report that is saying the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must study medical equipment cybersecurity controls more carefully and more […]

The HHS’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) investigated Fairview Southdale Hospital, which is located in Edina, MN, because of a supposed patient privacy violation. It was found out that during the psychiatric evaluations […]

The Fetal Diagnostic Institute of the Pacific (FDIP) based in Honolulu, Hawaii was attacked by ransomware on June 30, 2018. This resulted to the installation of a file-encrypting software on a server, which encrypted different […]

On September 12, 2018, President Trump approved the declaration of a federal emergency in the state of Virginia. FEMA resources were also made available to the state. Secretary Alex Azar of the U.S. Department of […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a Cybersecurity Framework in 2014 to help private companies in assessing their security policies and improving their ability to stop, identify, and respond to cyberattacks. Figures […]

From October 3, 2018, Apple App Store is going to enforce a new privacy policy regulation that app developers are required to tell users what they do with the collected personal data; how they protect […]

The New Mexico Department of Health is checking why the personal health documents of a number of of its patients fell off a truck while being transported from the facility to the safe storage location. […]

NTT Security’s new report showed that 66% of UK’s senior officers confirmed that their organizations are not ready to cover adequately the fiscal effect of data loss in the event of a data breach. This […]

The New York Attorney General fined the Arc of Erie County with $200,000 for Violating HIPAA Rules as a result of failing to safeguard its customers’ electronic protected health information (ePHI). The Arc of Erie […]

The Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) issued a statement concerning nine vulnerabilities identified in Philips healthcare products upon the Amsterdam-based technology firm statement of the matter to the […]

There is a code weakness found in Qualcomm Life’s Capsule Datacaptor Terminal Server (DTS) that allows an attacker to get administrator privileges and remotely make changes to the code. The Qualcomm Life Capsule’s DTS is […]

Missouri Care made an error in a sending letters to a number of plan members reminding them to schedule well-child visits. Because of the error, the personal data of around 20,000 children was inadvertently exposed […]

Authentic Recovery Center is a drug and alcohol treatment center located in West Los Angeles that had lately encountered a phishing attack causing the possible access of personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information […]

Dennis and Wayne Russell’s adopted two-year old boy named Keon passed away as a result of accidentally drowning. Soon after the boy was brought to McAlester Regional Health Center, they got a telephone call from […]

Central Colorado Dermatology (CCD) advised around 4,000 patients that hackers possibly viewed some of their protected health information (PHI) due to a ransomware attack on its information system. An unauthorized person obtained access to CCD’s […]

The Gordon Schanzlin New Vision Institute found in La Jolla, CA, notified thousands of patients about the stealing of their healthcare information after records that contains protected health information (PHI) were found to be in […]

In spite of many communication strategies available, healthcare providers still frequently use faxes for communicating. Some estimates propose as much as 75% of all communications take place by means of fax in the healthcare sector. […]

The Anti-Phishing Working Group issued its Phishing Activity Trends Report for Q1 2018 that indicates there was a significant rise in unique phishing webpages found in the first couple of months of 2018 in comparison […]

The healthcare records of over 17,000 patients were compromised in two healthcare data breaches in Massachusetts and Oregon. Lane County Health and Human Services located in Oregon has informed over 700 patients about the loss […]

In the last year, the quantity of email data breach reports progressively went up. The Beazley Breach Insights Report July edition said that 23% of all data breaches documented by BBR (Beazley Breach Response) in […]

On July 22, Alex Azar, The Heritage Foundation, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), stated during an address that the HHS is preparing for various changes to the health privacy regulations […]

There is a new bill filed in the state of Massachusetts looking to boost protections for people affected by data breaches. The bill entails complimentary credit monitoring services to be provided to people whose private […]

Ruben U. Carvajal, MD, a physician in New York began notifying his patients that unauthorized persons potentially accessed their protected health information (PHI). Dr Carvajal knew about the possible privacy breach on January 3, 2018 […]

Alive Hospice in Tennessee found that two of its employees’ email accounts were unsecured because of phishing attacks. While examining Alive Hospice’ email system on May 15, 2018, recurring unauthorized access to the email accounts […]

8,400 patients’ protected health information (PHI) included in the email account of a personnel of Billings Clinic in Billings, MT was exposed. The cybersecurity systems of the clinic spotted a number of strange activities that […]

Cass Regional Medical Center in Harrisonville, MO encountered a ransomware attack on July 9, 2018. The ransomware attack impacted its communication network so employees cannot access its electronic medical record (EHR) system. Thankfully, the medical […]

Humana is letting members know that in certain states that an advanced spoofing attack possibly compromised their protected health information (PHI). A spoofing attack is an effort by a bot or threat actor to access […]

OhioHealth’s Grant Medical Center dispatched fax messages containing the protected health information (PHI) of a patient to the wrong person in the last few months. This is a violation of the HIPAA rules and privacy […]

Outdated pager systems are already replaced by secure messaging systems in lots of healthcare companies. Any healthcare provider that may be still utilizing the pager system should be aware of the security breach that recently […]

Washington Health System resolved to suspend some employees after finding out about their supposed inappropriate access of patient health information. Even though there’s no confirmation regarding the number of employees that were suspended from their […]

A personnel in Terros Health in Phoenix was victimized by a phishing scam and by mistake exposed his login information. The attacker gained access to the victim’s email account who likely viewed the protected health […]

The former employees of Hair Free Forever and Muir Medical Group stole the protected health information (PHI) of patients and gave it to other employers. The patients were informed by the covered organizations concerning the […]

Dignity Health submitted multiple data breach reports and HIPAA violations to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The reports included an unauthorized access to the PHI of patients, access […]

In the latest Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit as mandated by the 21st Century Cures Act, the data revealed that patients find it hard to obtain copies of their medical information mainly because of high […]

In April, Purdue University’s security group identified two security breaches which likely granted unauthorized people access to the protected health information (PHI) of patients. A data file on Purdue Univesity Pharmacy’s computers suggests that an […]

April was a terrible month as the healthcare sector suffered from an increased number of data breaches and the persons impacted compared to March. The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 41 submissions of […]

Lincare Inc, a respiratory therapy vendor, consented to pay $875,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit that its employees filed for a breach of their W-2 details. The data breach happened on February 3, 2017 when […]

A segment of Allied Physicians Group of Michiana’s network system was down due to a ransomware attack. This episode occurred on May 17, 2018. The attacker encrypted a number of data files stored on the […]

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in general is applicable to European Union residents in the EU. However how does the GDPR affect EU citizen when he leaves his country and reside in the US […]

There are numerous benefits to utilizing the cloud. A growing number of healthcare companies are using the cloud for their IT needs like migrating programs, infrastructure and datacenter functions. Even so, a big concern is […]

UnityPoint Health identified a data breach on February 15, 2018 which led to the compromise of 16,429 patients’ protected health information. It seems that the data breach happened as a result of the failure of […]

People ask a lot of questions about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is going to be enforced on May 25, 2018. Employees ask how the GDPR apply to their personal data. The GDPR […]

The Department of Justice (DOJ) does not pursue many criminal penalties for HIPAA violations. But in cases of serious patient privacy violation, such as when the protected health information (PHI) is impermissibly disclosed with malicious […]

A former employee of Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) got hold of the protected health information of about 100 patients after being terminated from work. She had collected personal items from her old […]

Many people talk about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) nowadays with its pending enforcement on May 25, 2018. Since the GDPR is an EU law, does it only impact organizations located within the EU? […]

MEDantex, a transcription service provider, accidentally left patient medical records unsecured and freely accessible to anyone without the need of a password.  The error in restricting access to a physician’s portal resulted in the exposure […]

For the first quarter of 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) received 77 reports of healthcare data breaches. Over one million patients and health plan members were affected […]

According to Symantec, there’s a recently identified threat group called Orangeworm, which is launching targeted attacks on big healthcare companies in the United States. Orangeworm was first discovered in January 2015. It has been doing […]

The protected health information of 1,071 patients who received medical services at the Des Moines Crisis Observation Center was “accidentally and unknowingly disseminated” for a period of three and a half years. The Crisis Observation […]

The updated version of the Cybersecurity Framework was made available by the National Institute of Standards and Technology this April 16, 2018. This framework for improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity was issued initially on February 2014. […]

The number of healthcare data breaches increased month-over-month. In March 2018, HIPAA covered entities reported 29 security breaches. February 2018 had 25 breach incidents. Though the number of reported data breaches increased in March, there […]