Nathan Eddy reports: Coffey Health System, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Kansas, has agreed to pay a $250,000 settlement for alleged False Claims Act violations related to its meaningful use attestation. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Justice charged that the hospital falsely attested that it had conducted the necessary security assessment to comply with…
Month: June 2019
Unsurprisingly, big numbers from the AMCA breach are starting to be revealed
On May 10, when DataBreaches.net first reported that the American Medical Collection Agency had been breached, we reported that information from 200,000 payment cards had been found for sale on a top-tier market by Gemini Advisory analysts, whose investigation linked those cards to AMCA. At the time, we did not know how many other payment…
Premera Reaches Proposed $74M Settlement Over 2014 Breach of 11M
Jessica Davis reports: Premera Blue Cross reached a proposed $74 million settlement with the 11 million patients impacted by its 2014 breach, caused by a sophisticated cyberattack that lasted for nearly one year before it was discovered. In January 2015, Premera officials discovered the breach that began nearly a year earlier in May 2014. Premera, Premera…
Jewish dating app JCrush exposed user data and private messages
Zack Whittaker reports: A security lapse at JCrush, a dating app designed for the Jewish community, left a database open without a password, exposing sensitive user records and private messages to anyone who knew where to look. The site’s backend database had around 200,000 user records, according to security researchers Noam Rotem and Ran Locar,…
Romanian National Sentenced for Multi-State ATM Card Skimming Scheme
A Romanian national was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts, in connection with a multi-state ATM card skimming scheme. The following information is provided by the Department of Justice: Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling for the District of Massachusetts, Special Agent…
Understanding When Business Associates Are Directly Liable Under HIPAA
Aimee Jachym and Samantha A. Kopacz of Miller Canfield PLC write: New guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reaffirms that business associates must have proper HIPAA compliance practices, safeguards and documentation in place in order to avoid costly penalties. OCR recently released a Fact…