Jeff Deal and Jason Kelly report: Federal investigators said two former Florida Hospital employees stole and sold an unknown number of patient records. The hospital said it wouldn’t comment on the allegations because of a pending lawsuit, but Channel 9’s Jeff Deal uncovered a civil lawsuit against the hospital, which is separate from the criminal case,…
Category: Health Data
Insider Threat Seriously Undermining Healthcare Cybersecurity
I don’t agree that insider threats are more of a problem than external threats, but I am glad to see insider threats – including “human error” incidents get more attention. Jai Vijayan reports: The healthcare industry’s ability to defend against cyberthreats is being seriously undermined by its own workforce, according to two separate reports released…
Flexible Benefit Service Corporation notifies 5,123 of phishing incident
Illinois-headquartered Flexible Benefit Service Corporation (“Flex”) is a general agency and benefit administrator serving insurance brokers, employers and insurance carriers. As such, they are a Business Associate to HIPAA-covered entities. The follow is from their notification of a security incident that was reported to HHS on February 16, as impacting 5,123 people. Flex does not indicate…
Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services Notifies 11,000 Consumers About Breach of Protected Health Information
March 1, 2018 TOPEKA, Kan. – The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) has begun to notify individual consumers about a recent incident in which personal or protected health information was disseminated to a specific group of KDADS business associates. On February 23, 2018, KDADS became aware of a potential breach of personal…
Resource: 5 steps to get a handle on your practice’s cyber vulnerability
This free webinar, recorded in September, 2017, might be very helpful to small practices or solo practitioners who are feeling overwhelmed about how to start hardening their security to comply with HIPAA and to prevent attacks or breaches. From the AMA: A staggering 83 percent of physicians recently told AMA researchers that their practices have…
Verizon 2018 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report
From Verizon: We’ve re-examined the data within our Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) series (2016 and 2017) to focus in on the healthcare sector’s unique profile and security challenges, and particularly the use/abuse of protected health information (PHI). Our 2018 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report (PHIDBR) is underpinned by 1,368 incidents from this caseload…