Jan Murphy reports: A data breach of a state Department of Education database may have potentially compromised personal information including Social Security numbers of Pennsylvania’s current and former teachers. A red notice was posted at the top of the department’s website through the weekend noting a “security incident on the Teacher Information Management System.” The…
Category: U.S.
FastHealth notifies patients of 2017 incident involving their data
In May, 2017, this site started reporting that a number of healthcare facilities had been impacted by a breach at their vendor, Tuscaloosa-based FastHealth. FastHealth provides website and operational tools and services, including online bill payment. According to FastHealth’s news release at the time, an unauthorized third party had altered code on its web server,…
Mercy Health Love County Hospital and Clinic notifies patients about unaccounted-for computers
Mercy Health Love County Hospital and Clinic in Oklahoma appears to be having a rough year with breaches and notifications. As previously reported on this site, last summer they had an incident involving medical records being stolen for identity theft. They disclosed that incident in July, and in September, 2017, they reported it to HHS….
Almost half a million breached health records in January; 60% from one hacking incident alone
Protenus has released its Breach Barometer for January health data breaches. While the number of insider and external incidents continue to run pretty much neck-to-neck, once again external breaches accounted for significantly more breached records than insider incidents. Protenus reports: Of note, hacking incidents affected significantly more patient records, due largely to one particular breach…
Millville ShopRite experiences data security incident
Maxwell Reil reports: A ShopRite pharmacy in Millville experienced a data security incident involving the loss of personal and medical information, according to Wakefern Food Corp., the cooperative that supplies goods and support services to ShopRite stores and pharmacies. According to a news release, a device used in the pharmacy to capture customer signatures was…
Understanding Data Breaches as National Security Threats
Susan Landau writes: For decades the theft of private individuals’ data has been treated as an annoyance. Activist state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission have pursued cases, but U.S. laws fail to treat theft of personal data as a serious crime in itself. The indictment detailing Russian activity during the 2016 presidential campaign…