Owatonna, MN-based Minnesota South Country Health Alliance has discovered an unauthorized individual accessed the email account of an employee that contained the protected health information of 66,874 of its members. The email account breach was detected on September 14, 2020, with the subsequent investigation revealing the account was first accessed by an unauthorized individual on… Read More »
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has overturned a $4,348,000 HIPAA violation penalty imposed on University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights. The Civil Monetary Penalty was imposed on M.D. Anderson in 2018 following an investigation of three data breaches… Read More »
The DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a warning that threat actors are exploiting poor cyber hygiene to gain access to enterprise cloud environments. The alert was issued after CISA observed a surge in attacks on organizations that have transitioned to a largely remote workforce in response to the pandemic. While some… Read More »
There has been a significant increase in healthcare industry web application attacks according to new data published by cybersecurity firm Imperva. Imperva Research Labs monitored a 51% increase in web application attacks between November 2020 and December 2020, which coincided with the start of the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Imperva SVP Terry Ray said 2020… Read More »
In December, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) suffered a cyberattack and hackers gained access to third party documents. Some of the data stolen in the attack has now been leaked online. The EMA is the agency responsible for regulating the assessments and approvals of COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and research in the EU. The EMA had… Read More »
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) settled 19 HIPAA violation cases in 2020. More financial penalties were issued in 2020 than in any other year since the Department of Health and Human Services was given the authority to enforce HIPAA compliance. $13,554,900 was paid to OCR to settle the… Read More »
Compliancy Group has confirmed Williamstown, NJ-based COPS Monitoring, the largest provider of professional monitoring in the United States, has implemented an effective HIPAA compliance program. The regulatory standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) govern the privacy, security, and integrity of sensitive healthcare data called Protected Health Information (PHI). Any vendor of… Read More »
The HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is continuing to crackdown on healthcare providers that are not providing patients with timely access to their medical records. Yesterday, OCR announced a settlement had been agreed with Banner Health to resolve a HIPAA Right of Access investigation. Banner Health agreed to pay $200,000 to settle the case.… Read More »
The protected health information of certain patients of LSU Health University Medical Center-New Orleans has potentially been compromised in an email security breach. LSU Health New Orleans Health Care Services Division previously announced on November 20, 2020 that it has suffered a security breach involving the email account of an employee in September 2020. At… Read More »
On January 5, 2020, President Trump added his signature to a bill (HR 7898) that amends the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) and creates a safe harbor for companies that have implemented recognized security best practices prior to experiencing a data breach. While the bill does not go as… Read More »