Associated Press reports: Premera Blue Cross, the largest health insurer in the Pacific Northwest, has agreed to pay $10 million to 30 states following an investigation into a data breach that exposed confidential information on more than 10 million people across the country. The settlement, negotiated with the Washington attorney general’s office and filed in…
Category: Health Data
Anaesthetic devices ‘vulnerable to hackers’
Chris Baraniuk reports: A type of anaesthetic machine that has been used in NHS hospitals can be hacked and controlled from afar if left accessible on a hospital computer network, a cyber-security company says. A successful attacker would be able to change the amount of anaesthetic delivered to a patient, CyberMDX said. Alarms designed to…
DNA-testing service exposed thousands of customer records online
Nico Grant reports: DNA-testing service Vitagene Inc. left thousands of client health reports exposed online for years, the kind of incident that privacy advocates have warned about as gene testing has become increasingly popular. More than 3,000 user files remained accessible to the public on Amazon Web Services cloud-computer servers until July 1, when Vitagene…
Break-in at medical records centre behind discovery of personal files in Donegal park
There’s an update to a news story that was first reported in June. TheJournal.ie now reports that the HSE has admitted that there was a break-in involving storage containers at St. Conal’s medical facility close to Letterkenny University Hospital. According to the HSE, a lock on the container was smashed and an unknown number of…
Urgent Cyber Warning For Hospitals Over Threat Of ‘WannaCry Repeat’: Report
Zak Doffman reports: In the two years since the devastating WannaCry cyberattack hit worldwide, institutions have not done enough to protect themselves against a repeat. And that’s especially true in the healthcare sector. A report this week by Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) warns that hospitals “remain vulnerable to cyber attack,…
St John Ambulance praised for response to ransomware attack
Warwick Ashford reports: St John Ambulance has reported that it was hit by a ransomware attack this week, but was able to isolate the attack and resolve it within half an hour. Fortunately, the ransomware did not affect operational systems, but blocked access to the charity’s booking system for training courses and encrypted customer data….