Protenus, Inc. has released its Breach Barometer for January. As they report, 2017 is starting out where 2016 left off: we are seeing an average of one breach per day involving health data. Protenus’s report, based on 31 incidents, reported that there were 388,307 breached records for the 26 incidents for which they had numbers. The single largest…
Category: Health Data
AU: Top End Health Service breach exposes private details of cancer patients
Hayley Sorenson reports: Confidential documents showing the diagnoses and contact details of dozens of Royal Darwin Hospital cancer patients ended up in a suburban driveway. The three-page file appears to be an appointment schedule for Northern Territory Radiation Oncology, based at the Alan Walker Cancer Centre at the RDH. It shows the names, phone numbers and…
Multnomah County notified 1,700 patients after discovering employee was forwarding emails to personal account
From Multnomah County, Oregon: January 20, 2017 On August 24, 2012, a Health Department employee began automatically forwarding all emails received in the employee’s county email account to a personal Google email account not maintained by the county. Some of these emails included protected health information (PHI) subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability…
Five months after learning of problem, Michigan cancer treatment provider notifies 22,000 patients
On October 21, 2016, Singh & Arora Oncology Hematology PC in Michigan notified HHS of a hacking incident that they reported impacted 16,000 patients. Today, we learn that 22,000 patients are first getting notification letters this week. Why has it taken more than three months since HHS was notified for patients to be notified? Jessica Dupnack reports: According to the letter, one of…
Small Milwaukee publisher sues to stop misrouted medical faxes putting him at risk
Jim Stingl reports: If you fax private medical information to a health management company in Ohio, you don’t expect it to arrive instead at a small publishing firm in Milwaukee. Well, surprise! That’s exactly what has been happening since the summer of 2015. Craig Berg, owner of Moose Moss Press, has tried to make it stop, but the wayward…
Isis-linked hackers attack NHS websites to show gruesome images from Syrian civil war
Kim Sengupta reports: Islamist hackers linked to Isis carried out an attack on a series of NHS websites in a cyber-attack exposing serious flaws in security systems meant to protect sensitive information, The Independent has learnt. Graphic, brutal images of violence from Syria’s war were put up on the sites by a group based in North Africa…