I was surprised to read this morning that Hospice of North Idaho had settled charges by HHS over a laptop stolen from an employee’s car in the summer of 2010. I was surprised, in part, because I was not aware of this incident at all as it had not appeared in HHS’s breach tool. Since…
Author: Dissent
Inadequate security of personal, private, and sensitive Information in school districts’ mobile computing devices – audit
I’ve often pointed out my concerns that public schools – at least those in New York that I’ve been in – do not seem to have adequate security in place for the vast troves of sensitive and confidential information they collect and retain. So I was unsurprised to read that a recent Office of the…
They’re guilty of ID theft, but don’t ask the government how/where they got the personal info?
Here’s another case where it’s clear there’s been some compromise of PII, but we have no idea how from what law enforcement tells us: According to documents filed in court, Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) officers executed a search warrant at [Travonn Xavier Russell’s] residence on January 18, 2012. During the search, MDPD officers found the following…
Health-care sector vulnerable to hackers (and other security problems), researchers say
This will come as absolutely no surprise to regular readers of this blog, but The Washington Post has published the results of an investigation into security in the healthcare sector, and the results are… well, what I’d expect. The article is instructive for the range of problems it covers and some real-world examples. Many of…
Glitch imperils swath of encrypted records
Shaun Waterman reports: A widely used method of computer encryption has a little-noticed problem that could allow confidential data stored by almost all Fortune 500 companies and everything stored on U.S. government classified computers to be “fairly easily” stolen or destroyed. The warning comes from the inventor of the encryption method, known as Secure Shell or SSH. “In…
Nurses turning to un-authorized smartphones to meet data demands
John Cox reports: A new study finds that more than two-thirds of nurses are using their personal smartphones for clinical communications. Yet 95% of nurses in the sample say hospital IT departments don’t support that use for fear of security risks. The report, “Healthcare without Bounds: Point of Care Computing for Nursing 2012,” by Spyglass Consulting Group, points to the…