December 27 NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James today secured $300,000 from The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) for disclosing the health information of individuals who visited their website. An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that the hospital used advertising tools on its website that collected and shared private and personal…
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Fairfax Co. concludes investigation into student data breach
Scott Gelman reports: An investigation into how Fairfax County Public Schools accidentally shared other students’ private information with a parent during a fall meeting has concluded, Superintendent Michelle Reid said in a letter to families Thursday. The external review, conducted by the law firm Woods Rogers, found that the data breach occurred because the parent…
Patient records lost, equipment damaged at several urban primary health centers by cyclone
Every so often, a natural disaster reminds us of other ways records are lost and why entities should have offsite backups that are regularly updated. Ishvarya Lakshmi reports: Patient records, medical instruments, drugs, syringes, needles and sanitary pads in several urban primary health centres (UPHC) were swept away during the recent cyclone. Officials at the…
Did Akumin experience two cyber attacks in October and November? It has only acknowledged one. (1)
On October 25, DataBreaches reported that Akumin’s ability to provide diagnostic services at some locations remained disrupted two weeks after they detected suspicious activity on their network. What they subsequently identified as a ransomware attack occurred during a time when Akumin was also dealing with bankruptcy. While there was some resolution of financial issues, things…
Seattle cancer patients face blackmail threats after recent Fred Hutch data breach
Brittany Toolis reports: As if battling cancer isn’t hard enough, now patients at UW’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center are being extorted. Last month, the Cancer Center experienced a data breach, exposing data for an unknown number of patients. Some of those patients are getting emails threatening to leak their personal information if they don’t pay…
The Untold Story of a Massive Hack at HHS in Covid’s Early Days
Jordan Robertson and Riley Griffin report: On March 15, 2020, just days after the US declared a national emergency because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the computer network for the US Department of Health and Human Services briefly vanished from the internet. In public remarks the following day, HHS Secretary Alex Azar attributed the 10-minute outage to a cyberattack but…