A notice in the Federal Register this week has understandably generated a lot of comment in the health IT community. Here’s the summary from the notice: SUMMARY: In accordance with the Privacy Act, we are proposing to modify or alter an existing SOR, “Program Information Management System (PIMS),” System No. 09-90-0052, published at 67 FR…
Author: Dissent
(update) 9-year-old didn’t hack Blackboard system
Although it made for an interesting story, it seems that the recent incident in Virginia, reported here, was not a hack. The kid simply found and used a teacher’s password. Robert McMillan has the corrected story here.
Attorney General Reaches Settlement with Certegy Check Services over Data Breach
Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced a settlement with a financial services company over allegations the company did not provide adequate data security for consumer records. Certegy Check Services, Inc., a St. Petersburg-based company, experienced a massive data breach which exposed personal identification information from approximately 5.9 million consumer files. Under the settlement, the company…
DVDs with Lorillard Tobacco employee data missing
On Tuesday, Lorillard Tobacco notified the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office that its benefits consultant, Towers Watson, had notified the company that two DVDs containing employee data were lost in transit on or about February 2. Lorillard’s Vice-President of Human Resources, William G. Crump, explained: The package was lost after being picked up from the…
Monning pulls pharmaceutical bill; Assemblyman says he will use time to rally support for next year
Genevieve Bookwalter reports: Realizing it did not have the necessary votes to pass, Assemblyman Bill Monning on Tuesday shelved his bill that would have reined in the sale of doctors’ prescription records for marketing purposes. Monning said he might reintroduce the bill, aimed at big pharmaceutical companies, in January if he can drum up enough…
Blue Cross Mistake Releases Personal Info of 12K Members
From the press release: Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI) today announced that personal information belonging to approximately 12,000 BlueCHiP for Medicare members was inadvertently contained in a filing cabinet donated with other surplus office furniture to a local nonprofit organization. The filing cabinet mistakenly contained completed BlueCHiP for Medicare Health Surveys…