What is the 21st Century Cures Act? The 21st Century Cures Act, going into effect on April 5, 2021, gives patients more control over their electronic health information and aims to prevent information blocking. More details are discussed below. What is Information Blocking? Information blocking refers to the interference of access, exchange, or use of… Read More »
On January 12, 2021, Denver-based Colorado Retina Associates discovered the email account of one of its employees had been accessed by an unauthorized individual who used it to send phishing emails to individuals in the employee’s contact list. The email account was immediately secured and a cybersecurity firm was engaged to investigate the incident to… Read More »
2021 was a challenging year for healthcare organizations. Not only was the industry on the frontline in the fight against COVID-19, hackers who took advantage of overrun hospitals to steal data and conduct ransomware attacks. The 2021 Breach Barometer Report from Protenus shows the extent to which the healthcare industry suffered from cyberattacks and other… Read More »
The Portland, OR-based technology and communication solution provider Metro Presort suffered a ransomware attack on May 6, 2019 which resulted in the encryption of files and locked staff out of its systems. The ransomware attack was promptly identified and was contained by May 15, 2019 and the company was able to recover from the attack… Read More »
PeakTPA, a St. Louis, MO-based provider of health plan management and back-office services, has announced it suffered a cyberattack on or around December 28, 2020 in which protected health information was stolen. The security incident was detected on December 31 and involved two cloud servers used by the company to manage program of all-inclusive care… Read More »
A former Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center nurse has pleaded guilty to tampering with a consumer product in a case involving fraud and HIPAA violations. In 2018, 6 patients of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center contracted a Sphingomonas paucimobilis bloodstream infection within the space of a few weeks. An investigation found syringes of hydromorphone had… Read More »
A hacking collective has gained access to the systems of the Californian security camera startup Verkada Inc. and the live feeds and archived footage from almost 150,000 cloud-connected surveillance cameras used by large corporations, schools, police departments, jails, and hospitals. As initially reported by Bloomberg, Verkada’s systems were accessed by a white hat hacking collective… Read More »
A coalition of 41 state Attorneys General has agreed to settle an investigation into Retrieval-Masters Creditors Bureau dba American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA) over a 2019 data breach that resulted in the exposure/theft of the protected health information of 21 million Americans. Retrieval-Masters Creditors Bureau is a debt collection agency, with its AMCA arm providing small… Read More »
Premier Diagnostics, a Utah-based COVID-19 testing service, has inadvertently exposed the protected health information of tens of thousands of individuals. Two Exposed Amazon S3 buckets were discovered by Bob Diachenko of Comparitech on February 22, 2021. It was not initially clear who owned the data, which related to patients from Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. The… Read More »
New London Hospital in central New Hampshire has discovered an unauthorized individual gained access to a file on its network in July 2020 and may have obtained the protected health information of 34,878 patients. A third-party cybersecurity firm was engaged to assist with the investigation and determined on February 16, 2021 that the file was… Read More »