Matt Pilon reports: UConn Health on Friday disclosed that an unauthorized third party had accessed employee email accounts, potentially breaching the privacy of 326,000 patients and others. Of that number, 1,500 could have had their social security numbers exposed, UConn Health said. For others, potentially acquired details include names, dates of birth, addresses, and billing…
Category: Health Data
Kentucky Counseling Center notifies more than 16,000 patients after discovering suspected insider-wrongdoing breach
On February 11, Kentucky Counseling Center notified HHS of a breach impacting 16,440 patients. Using HHS’s coding system to report, the incident was reported as a case of unauthorized access/disclosure involving EMR. But on their site, KCC makes clear that they suspect a former employee of taking a list of patient information. The full notification…
UW Medicine notifying 974,000 patients whose information was exposed online in December
The University of Washington Medicine (UW Medicine) is notifying patients after an error exposed protected health information of 974,000 patients online for three weeks in December. UW Medicine includes the University’s medical school as well as Harborview Medical Center, the UW Medical Center, Northwest Hospital and Medical Center, Valley Medical Center and more than two-dozen…
AU: Malware locks up 15,000 medical files at Cabrini Hospital, hackers demand ransom
Cameron Houston and Anthony Colangelo report: A cyber crime syndicate has hacked and scrambled the medical files of about 15,000 patients from a specialist cardiology unit at Cabrini Hospital and demanded a ransom. The attack is now the subject of a joint investigation by Commonwealth security agencies. Melbourne Heart Group, which is based at the…
Privacy commissioner investigating security of patient health records at Alberta Health Services Social Sharing
Jennie Russell reports: Alberta’s privacy commissioner is investigating whether Alberta Health Services properly safeguards the public’s personal health information after CBC News revealed the electronic system housing it was vulnerable to outside security threats. A 2018 assessment by an external security firm found several “significant risks” with the health authority’s administration of the Alberta Netcare…
Healthcare hotline: Millions of medical advice calls exposed in Sweden
John Leyden reports: Calls recorded by a Swedish national health service hotline were stored on an unencrypted system that was publicly accessible to anyone with an internet connection, it has emerged. An estimated 2.7 million phone calls were discovered to have been left open by an unprotected NAS (network attached storage) system, and were accessible…