HMG Healthcare has posted a notice of a data breach on its website, but most people are unlikely to notice the substitute notice because of the way it has been presented. If the purpose of a substitute notice under HIPAA is to reach people the covered entity may not have sufficient or current contact information…
Category: Health Data
Capital Health acknowledges a cyberattack last month but details are lacking
LockBit3.0 claims to have hit CapitalHealth.org in New Jersey. In a listing posted on their site on January 7, the threat actors write, “We purposely didn’t encrypt this hospital so as not to interfere with patient care. We just stole over 10 million files. Over 7 terabytes of medical confidentiality data valued at $250,000. That’s…
Personal, pregnancy details of Midwives of Windsor patients breached
CBC reports: A data breach involving email has exposed the personal and pregnancy information of an unknown number of clients of the Midwives of Windsor, CBC News has learned. The breach was reported to Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner months before it was disclosed to clients of the practice. Read more at CBC.
Attorney General James Reaches Agreement with Refuah Health Center to Invest $1.2 Million to Protect Patient Data and Pay $450,000 in Penalties to State
January 5, 2024 NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced an agreement with a Hudson Valley-area health care provider, Refuah Health Center, Inc. (Refuah), for failing to safeguard the personal and private health information of its patients. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that Refuah failed to maintain appropriate controls to protect and limit access to sensitive data, including by failing to encrypt patient information and using multi-factor authentication. As…
23andMe Says Breach Victims Are to Blame, Legal Action is Futile
As incident response and public relations go, blaming victims for your breach is generally not an impressive strategy. Michael Edgar reports that 23andMe seems to be doing exactly that: Months after the San Francisco based company experienced a data breach impacting about 6.9 million users, 23andMe is now facing criticism for blaming victims of the breach and…
The State of Ransomware in the U.S.: Report and Statistics 2023
Data analyses and commentary by Emsisoft begins: “From 2016 to 2021, we estimate that ransomware attacks killed between 42 and 67 Medicare patients.” — McGlave, Neprash, and Nikpay; University of Minnesota School of Public Health1 In 2023, the U.S. was once again battered by a barrage of financially-motivated ransomware attacks that denied Americans access to…