Sophie Peel reports: An email sent by Oregon Health and Sciences University on April 12 to all its employees advertised a program offering up to $7,500 aid to employees struggling with finances due to the pandemic. It asked recipients to click a link. The link, when clicked, routed to a page that said no financial…
Author: Dissent
RIPTA says it paid hackers $170K in ransom money after massive data breach
ABC6 reports: The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority said Thursday it paid hackers $170,000 in ransom money after a massive data breach in August. The hack exposed the names, birth dates, and social security numbers of thousands of state employees, some of which didn’t even work for the agency. Read more at ABC6. The incident, which affected 22,000…
SuperCare Health Sued After Data Breach
The gap from the disclosure of a data breach to the filing of a potential class-action lawsuit is often a matter of weeks (or less), although a lot of lawsuits are dismissed for lack of Article III standing (see a 2021 review of data breach litigation here). In March, in-home respiratory care provider SuperCare…
About 1,700 MetroHealth patients affected by data breach
Jordan Unger reports: The MetroHealth System confirmed Wednesday that about 1,700 patients were affected by an accidental data breach. According to MetroHealth, the issue occurred during an upgrade to their electronic medical record system on Nov. 13. When MetroHealth sent out records to some of their patients, the name, date of service and provider name of…
Patients increasingly suing hospitals over data breaches
Jeff Lagasse reports: Industries are increasingly being sued by consumers for data breaches, but the sector with the biggest litigation increase is healthcare, according to new findings from the law firm BakerHostetler. In fact, healthcare comprises 23% of lawsuits due to data breaches. The next highest after that is business and professional services at 17%,…
On-the-Spot Intervention 95% Effective in Reducing Healthcare Employees’ Unauthorized Access to Protected Health Information (PHI)
The following is a press release from Protenus. As a reminder/disclosure: DataBreaches.net compiles data and performs some data analytic services for Protenus’s Breach Barometer each year. Protenus is pleased to announce a recent study found that on-the-spot interventions for healthcare employees who inappropriately accessed PHI were 95% effective in preventing repeat offenses. The article, “Effectiveness of…