From the FTC: The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it has approved a Federal Register notice seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would require entities to notify consumers when the security of their electronic health information is breached. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act) includes provisions to…
Category: Health Data
Northeast Rehabilitation Hospital patient data stolen
On April 8, Northeast Rehabilitation Hospital in Salem, New Hampshire notified (pdf) the New Hampshire Attorney General that paper and electronic records with personal and medical information on 8 patients was stolen from an employee’s vehicle on March 20. The hospital provides services to patients in homes and schools, and the laptop and document were…
Five Romanians arrested for hacking into U.S. pharmaceutical companies
Dan Kaplan of SC Magazine reports that five people have been arrested for illegally accessing computer systems belonging to unnamed U.S. pharmaceutical companies. The hackers allegedly installed keylogger software to steal card data on point-of-sales systems. Lucian Constantin reports that according to a DIICOT press release (in Romanian), the remote administration system used by the…
HK: Lost flash drive with patient data wasn’t password-protected
Adele Wong of The Standard reports that the Hospital Authority has been urged to improve security to avoid further losses of patients’ records following another incident involving a lost flash drive with unencrypted data. In this most recent incident, a physician from the obstetrics and gynecology department at United Christian Hospital misplaced a USB flash…
Lessons not yet learned
For those readers who do not regularly read the companion breach site, DataBreaches.net, there have been five healthcare-related breaches reported in the past seven days. Two of the reports involved paper records and improper disposal. The other three incidents involved theft from business associates or third parties.  In all three of the theft cases, the…
NC: Moses Cone Memorial Hospital patient data stolen from vendor
In what appears to be the third incident in the past week involving patient data and a third-party breach, personal information of more than 14,000 Moses Cone Health System patients was on a laptop stolen from VHA in Georgia. According to VHA’s web site, they serve 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals and more than 21,000 non-acute care…