Aaron Boyd reports: The Education Department is rolling out new rules for accessing and handling agency data by third parties—including students, parents and loan companies—with updated criminal penalties for anyone not following the new statutes. The new rules intend to bring the department into compliance with the 2019 Stop Student Debt Relief Scams Act and…
Category: Legislation
SEC fines three companies over hacked employee email accounts
Catalin Cimpanu reports: The US Securities and Exchange Commission has fined three brokerage firms on Monday for neglecting to secure employee accounts, incidents that led to the exposure of their customers’ data. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC, Cetera Investment Services LLC, Cetera Financial Specialists LLC, Cetera Advisors LLC, and Cetera Investment Advisers LLC (collectively, the Cetera entities); Cambridge…
Industry lobbies Congress to extend notification timeline after cybersecurity incidents
Maggie Miller reports: Key industry groups on Wednesday pushed to give organizations at least three days to report cybersecurity incidents to the federal government, effectively opposing Senate legislation that would give them 24 hours to report breaches. Read more on The Hill.
California DOJ Must Be Notified About Breaches of the Health Data of 500 or More California Residents
HIPAA Journal reminds us all that states can require notification to the state of breaches that are also covered by HIPAA and can take enforcement action if they are not reported: Recently, there have been several instances where the California DOJ has not been notified about ransomware attacks on California healthcare facilities, even though the…
Internal emails raise questions about government’s investigation into Walgreens privacy breach
I am so glad to see a follow-up on this case because I had the same questions about how and why Walgreens did not suffer the same federal penalties as CVS and Rite Aid for the same infringement of HIPAA. My original coverage of this breach is no longer online as the former version of…
Still Missing a New Leader, Former OCR Directors, Experts Offer Advice, Task List
Theresa Defino writes: Issue a final rule revising the privacy regulation and write guidance on the information blocking rule. Formalize the fledgling audit program required by Congress more than 10 years ago. Engage with providers and other HIPAA-regulated entities. And by all means, get cracking. In a series of interviews with RPP, two former Office for…