Stephen Cobb writes: As 2015 slides into the cybersecurity history books as “the year of the healthcare breach” I decided to examine one aspect of medical data privacy that is sometimes overlooked: the impact of breaches on patient-doctor information exchange. Specifically, I’m concerned that high profile healthcare-related IT security breaches may lead more people to…
Category: Health Data
Stolen Shire laptop contained patients’ personal and medical info
Pharmaceutical company Shire is notifying an unspecified number of individuals that their personal and medical information was on a laptop stolen from an employee’s car in Washington D.C. The laptop, which was issued by Shire Human Genetic Therapies, Inc. was stolen on December 30th and its theft was reported to the police immediately. Investigation into…
Suspected Member of Anonymous Arrested After Rescue At Sea During Disney Cruise
Tom Winter and Corky Siemaszko report: A suspected hacker from Massachusetts landed in hot water Wednesday a day after he was rescued at sea by a Disney cruise ship. Martin Gottesfeld was arrested by the FBI in Miami and charged with conspiracy for allegedly helping to launch a computer attack on Boston Children’s Hospital as part…
That Radiology Regional Center vendor’s breach potentially affected almost half a million patients
When Radiology Regional Center in Florida disclosed that paper records had been lost or fallen off the truck of its vendor, Lee County Solid Waste Division, they reported that they believed that they had retrieved all the records, but they were notifying all potentially affected individuals: Radiology Regional Center has advised potentially impacted patients to (1) place a…
Five Mounties sue RCMP in alleged medical privacy breach
There’s an update to a workplace medical privacy breach involving members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). I’ve been following the case on this blog since July, 2013. In December 2014, the privacy commissioner found that the RCMP had violated the employees’ privacy by turning over their records to a psychologist. In October 2015, there was a…
Memphis man accused of using stolen patient identity information to defraud banks of $1.6 million
Fox13 reports that Jeremy Jones of Memphis was indicated in federal court for his role in a bank fraud scheme that involved more than $1.6 million. The affidavit of complaint against Jeremy Jones said he started stealing identities of patients of Memphis Neurology back in 2011, and he used those identities to bilk various banks…