YLE reports: A data leak earlier this year saw the personal data and even laboratory test results of some 6,000 patients posted online, said the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) on Tuesday. The data ombudsman informed THL of the leak in August. The institute then removed the data from two online services where…
Category: Health Data
Healthcare Data Breach Litigation Trends
Bryan Cave provides a summary analysis of litigation in terms of what kinds of claims tend to fail to demonstrate standing in class action lawsuits and what types of claims may be sufficient to demonstrate standing. What they don’t show on either side of their chart is the question of “are the data involved highly embarrassing/stigmatizing?”…
NY: Woman Stole Elderly Identities To Fund ‘Brazilian Butt Lift’; Cops Say
CBS News reports: A Huntington Station woman has been accused of ripping off physical therapy patients to pay for cosmetic surgery. Suffolk County Police say Andrea Echevarria pilfered personal information from records kept by her old employer, Deer Park PTDC — a physical therapy office located in Deer Park. Authorities allege that Echevarria used the…
MA: SMART Physical Therapy hacked by TheDarkOverlord
SMART (“Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Therapy”) Physical Therapy has two locations in Massachusetts: one in Malden and one in Reading. But it doesn’t matter which one patients may have been treated at, as data from all of their patients was recently hacked by TheDarkOverlord. And not surprisingly, the attackers tried to extort the clinic. Having…
How Ransomware has become an ‘Ethical’ Dilemma in the Eastern European Underground
Regular readers of this site will remember the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center ransomware incident, if for no other reason than it was the first time we had a medical center publicly revealing that they had been hit by ransomware and had decided to pay the ransom (approximately $17,000) than risk a shutdown of life-saving equipment….
Analysis of August healthcare breaches highlights hacking incidents
Protenus’s Breach Barometer for August notes that hacking incidents accounted for 54.5% of the health data breaches disclosed in August and 95% of the 673,934 breached records for August incidents. Also of note: Extortion demands and non-automated ransom demands also continue to plague the healthcare industry, although in many cases, media reports and HHS reports make no mention…