Cindy E. Harnett reports: Island Health has uncovered another privacy breach, on the heels of its largest breach of medical records ever. A Victoria-based employee has viewed the medical records of 34 individuals, all from Vancouver island, who received services from Island Health. This is the fourth privacy breach in two years, and brings the…
Month: July 2016
Caldicott’s health security reform fails to address basic cyber hygiene
Richard Olver writes: The NHS treats more than 1 million people every 36 hours. These patients are often at their most vulnerable physically and emotionally, but so too are their digital selves. The health sector accounts for the most data security incidents in the UK — more than 40% of all UK incidents in Q4 2015 — and…
Analysis of Health Care Data Breach Litigation Trends
The law firm of Bryan Cave lists nine factors entities should look at when considering the risk that litigation poses following a breach. They note: Specifically, unless a plaintiff has been the victim of identity theft or has suffered some other type of concrete injury, most courts have refused to let them proceed based solely on the…
Insurance broker fined $1K for not following MPI privacy rules
Vera-Lynn Kubinec reports: A privacy breach involving customers’ auto insurance files has netted a Winnipeg insurance broker a $1,000 fine. Manitoba Public Insurance determined that last fall broker Basil Galarnyk accessed customer information 42 times without performing any transactions and with “no discernible reason” for accessing the files, a discipline panel has found. As a result, MPI…
Reps. Lieu and Hurd urge ransomware events to be reported under HITECH
Representatives Ted W. Lieu (D | Los Angeles County) and Will Hurd (R | San Antonio) sent a letter to Deven McGraw, Deputy Director of the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) encouraging the office to focus on developing guidance for health care providers to respond to ransomware attacks under…
FBI chief says Guccifer lied about hacking into Clinton’s email server
Michael Kan reports: A Romanian hacker’s claim that he broke into Hillary Clinton’s private email server in 2013 was a lie, according to the FBI. Marcel Lehel Lazar, also known as Guccifer, has boasted about the breach to various media outlets, saying in May that it had been “easy.” But on Thursday, FBI director James…