From HHS/OCR, this record-setting announcement: Anthem, Inc. has agreed to pay $16 million to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and take substantial corrective action to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules after a series of cyberattacks led…
Category: Of Note
AU: School students’ private medical details leaked in Google sync privacy mess
Here’s what appears to be a serious breach involving Google drive and syncing. Henrietta Cook reports: Confidential files detailing high school students’ medical conditions, including anxiety issues and those at risk of suicide, have been found on a Melbourne schoolgirl’s iPad. The document contains photos, names and medical and family details of years 7 to 12…
Escaping Notice, by Laying Low
HIPAA lawyer Matt Fisher has a thoughtful commentary inspired by an OCR investigation first reported on this site. Unlike the FTC who have tended to demand 20-year monitoring plans as part of their settlements with entities that have data security breaches, OCR tends to use a more educative approach without monetary penalties or long-term monitoring in…
Alibaba passes blame for Alipay thefts to Apple
Asia Times reports: Chinese tech giant Alibaba warned users on Wednesday that they could be at risk from making cashless transactions or paying bills with its Alipay application on Apple gadgets, stressing that the security loophole was not the fault of its app but of the US firm. An Apple security breach was blamed by…
Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public
Douglas MacMillan and Robert McMillan report: Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage, according to people briefed on the…
MedCall Advisors suffers second data leak in less than one month
A few weeks ago, DataBreaches.net reported on a leaky Amazon S3 bucket owned by MedCall Advisors in North Carolina. The leak, which exposed approximately 3,000 patients’ protected health information, was discovered by UpGuard, who published a number of redacted screenshots to document the leak. Their detailed report also noted how Randy Baker, the CEO of MedCall…