There’s an update to an incident affecting the City of Columbus, Ohio. That’s the one where a judge prohibited David L. Ross from talking to the media about it after the city sought to silence him after he began publicly refuting the city’s false or inaccurate claims about the breach. The city subsequently settled its…
Category: U.S.
HHS Office for Civil Rights Settles HIPAA Ransomware Cybersecurity Investigation for $90,000
HHS OCR announced a second ransomware investigation settlement today. This one involved Bryan County Ambulance Authority (BCAA), a provider of emergency medical services in Oklahoma. The Bryan County Ambulance Authority breach occurred in November 2021, but was only first reported to HHS on May 18, 2022. It affected 14,273 patients. HHS’s press release (below) notes…
How many similar breaches can one entity have in one year before regulators do something?
How many data breaches can an entity have before either some regulator steps in with a corrective action plan or something happens to reduce the likelihood of more breaches? Consider the following: Breach # 1 On February 22, 2022, Minuteman Senior Services (MSS) identified suspicious activity related to an employee’s email account. According to the notification…
Albany ENT & Allergy Services settles state charges stemming from two patient data breaches; agrees to spend $2.25M on security program
In April 2023, DataBreaches reported two ransomware groups had each listed Albany ENT & Allergy Services (AENT) on their respective leak sites. But one month later, when AENT sent notifications to regulators and 224,486 affected employees and patients, its notification letter made no mention of any ransomware attack, any encryption of files, any ransom demands,…
School ransomware attacks are on the rise. What can districts do?
Kara Arundel reports: … Ransomware — where threat actors use malware to block access to network systems and then demand payment to unlock it — has been ballooning in the K-12 sector over the last seven years, according to the K12 Security Information eXchange. Known as K12 SIX, the national nonprofit helps protect schools from…
Texas county says 47,000 had SSNs, medical treatment info leaked during May cyberattack
Jonathan Greig reports: A cyberattack in May gave hackers access to the personal, financial and medical information of more than 47,000 residents living in Wichita County, Texas. County officials filed breach notification documents with regulators in Texas as well as Maine and posted a notice on their website warning residents that the incident involved everything from names, Social Security…