We really need to have an “Oh, FFS!” category for breaches. Rob Pattinson reports: Medical records of hundreds of thousands of NHS patients were dumped in a town centre to weigh down scaffolding. They were meant to be shredded but instead used as ballast for an art festival structure. Read more on The Sun.
Category: Health Data
[CORRECTED] Peoples Injury Network Northwest notifies patients of ransomware incident
Like so many other ransomware incidents we’ve read about in the past year, investigators were not able to conclusively determine that patient data had not been accessed or exfiltrated. As a result, the Peoples Injury Network Northwest (PINN) of Washington recently notified 12,502 Washington residents that their data was potentially at risk from an April…
‘Detailed and graphic’: Clinic faxes patients’ highly sensitive medical histories to wrong number
Melissa Cunningham reports: A Melbourne medical clinic has been inadvertently faxing highly sensitive patient details including mental health and family medical histories to a Greenvale man for at least two years. The man said he has been sporadically faxed at least 10 medical referrals for specialist consultations from the Harding Street Medical Centre in Coburg….
WY: Gillette hospital targeted in ransomware attack
Seth Klamann reports: Campbell County Health in Gillette was targeted in a ransomware attack Friday, according to an alert the state Department of Health sent to health care providers. The attack occurred early Friday morning, at approximately 3 a.m. The hospital “experienced serious computer issues” due to the attack. This caused a “service disruption” at…
Criminal probe after data breach at Wigan hospital
Liam Sou Tar reports: The Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh (WWL) NHS Foundation Trust has sent out letters to victims of the data breach, who number more than 2,000, explaining that personal information was viewed on multiple occasions by an employee who had no legitimate reason to access the files and were not permitted to do…
Thousands of abandoned medical records found in deceased Indiana doctor’s abortion clinics
Christina Maxouris of CNN reports on what appears to be a horrifying medical privacy breach. First, authorities discovered a spine-chilling 2,246 fetal remains in the Illinois garage of an abortion doctor after his death. Then, investigators found “thousands” of abandoned medical records across his abortion clinics in Indiana, the Indiana attorney general announced on Friday….