Healthcare organizations are struggling with two key concerns today: how to protect patient information and how to better understand the financial harm caused when protected health information (PHI) is lost or stolen. A new project – led by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), via its Identity Theft Prevention and Identity Management Standards Panel (IDSP),…
Author: Dissent
ADA Violated When Employer Responds to State Subpoena and Discloses Former Employee's Medical Records
Joseph Lazzarotti writes: The confidentiality of medical records requirement under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) is violated when an employer discloses a current or former employee’s medical records in response to a state court subpoena absent the employee’s release or some other exception under the ADA, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently held in Bennett…
Play.com users newest victims of SilverPop breach
Anh Nguyen provides an update on a breach reported on PogoWasRight.org yesterday. At the time, I had raised the possibility that the breach might be linked to a previously known breach involving SilverPop. It turns out that was the explanation: Play.com has emailed its customers again to shed more light on the security breach it…
Divorce papers found in ‘new’ Asus laptop purchased in Singapore
Gareth Halfacree reports: Central Provident Fund statements and divorce documents; these were what Hidayat Sudirman found stored in a 14-inch Asus notebook PC he bought from retailer Newstead Technologies recently at an IT fair. The 25-year-old civil servant discovered 10GB worth of personal data, including tax return forms, belonging to its previous owner. Upset, he…
CA men indicted for allegedly stealing credit card info from 194 people in Hawaii
Minna Sugimoto reports: Honolulu prosecutors on Tuesday secured an eight-count indictment against three California men suspected of stealing financial information from nearly 200 people in Hawaii. Drivers like Adam Sonntag fuel up their cars without giving identity theft much thought. But Honolulu prosecutors say during a two-week period last September, three men used credit card…
Location Privacy And Wireless Body Area Networks
MIT Technology Review’s The Physics arXiv Blog has an article that gave me some food for thought about the wireless monitoring systems being used on patients to record blood pressure and other vital signs or activity. Although the health data/measures may be encrypted, the location of the device’s unique hardware address is not encrypted…