While some of us are spending this weekend digging out from snow, some Lawrence Public Schools teachers in Massachusetts are having to deal with protecting themselves from identity theft after an unspecified number of employees fell for a phishing scheme. Garrin Marchetti reports that personnel were notified of the breach of the online database by…
Category: U.S.
Update: Newburgh restores data deleted from cloud, but questions remain
Aha. Sometimes it pays to ask questions about backups. Yesterday, after reporting on a puzzling report out of Newburgh, NY, I was contacted by a friend who asked me if I would speak with the MidHudson News. I did, and suggested some questions they should be asking. Today, they report: One day after it was…
Vermont state employees fall for phishing email
Anne Galloway reports that at least 500 Vermont state employees fell for a phishing scam on Thursday that compromised at least 50 employees’ W-2 information. Galloway provides the text of the phishing email in her report. Had the employees checked the From address, they might have been suspicious that it wasn’t from a .gov address, and the…
California hematologist notifies patients after thief stole paper records with protected health information
Sometimes I find a breach listed on HHS’s public breach tool, but it’s a while before I can find out what happened. Such was the case with a breach reported by Michael S. Benjamin, MD, a California physician specializing in hematology and oncology. On December 28, Dr. Benjamin notified HHS of a breach affecting 1,300…
Alaska Orthopedic Specialists Notifies Patients of Security Incident
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Jan. 22, 2016 — Alaska Orthopedic Specialists has sent notification to all affected patients about a security incident involving information that was taken by a former non-physician employee. In March of 2015, Alaska Orthopedic Specialists, Inc., closed its medical practice in Anchorage, Alaska. In the course of closing the business later that year, the practice discovered that the…
New background check agency announced in wake of OPM hacks
It may go unnoticed while everyone focuses on the weather, but Greg Otto of FedScoop reports that The Obama administration will create a new office to conduct background checks on federal employees, in an effort to improve the security of personal information in the wake of the massive data breaches at the Office of Personnel Management. The formation of the National…