The health insurer Aetna ACE is one of the latest healthcare organizations to announce it has been affected by a ransomware attack on a mailing vendor, which involved the protected health information of 326,278 plan members. Aetna said the breach was limited to individuals insured under Aetna ACE, and that no protected health information of… Read More »

St. Luke’s Health System in Boise, ID, has recently reported a data breach to the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights that has affected 31,579 patients. The breach occurred in May 2022 at Kaye-Smith, the health system’s billing vendor, and affected patients that were billed that month. The breach was discovered in June 2022 and was… Read More »

The average payment in ransomware attacks increased in Q2, 2022; however, there was a fall in the median payment for the second successive quarter, indicating more victims of ransomware attacks are choosing not to pay up. The data comes from the latest quarterly report from the ransomware remediation firm, Coveware. The average ransom payment in… Read More »

Meta is facing another class action lawsuit over the unlawful collection and sharing of health data without content. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California on behalf of plaintiff, Jane Doe. The lawsuit alleges Meta and its companies, including Facebook, have been collecting the sensitive health data of millions of patients without obtaining… Read More »

SonicWall has released a mid-year update to its 2022 Cyber Threat Report, which highlights the global cyberattack trends in 1H 2022. The data for the report was collected from more than 1.1 million global sensors in 215 countries and shows a global fall in ransomware attacks, with notable increases in malware attacks for the first… Read More »

A major data breach has been reported that has affected dozens of healthcare, rehabilitation, and senior living facilities in Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona, which are operated by companies that are part of the Wilsonville, OR-based group, Avamere Holdings. Between January 19, 2022, and March 17, 2022, an unauthorized individual gained access to… Read More »

Koshland Pharm: Custom Compounding Pharmacy has been confirmed as being fully compliant with the federally mandated standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Koshland Pharm is a San Francisco, California-based PCAB-accredited compounding pharmacy that makes customized prescription medications. The company delivers exceptional quality products with a personalized experience for patients. Koshland Pharm… Read More »

The average cost of a healthcare data breach has reached double digits for the first time ever, according to the 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report from IBM Security. The average cost of a healthcare data breach jumped almost $1 million to a record high of $10.1 million, which is 9.4% more than in… Read More »

Most Americans are confident about their knowledge of cybersecurity according to a recent AT&T survey of 2,000 Americans, yet bad cyber hygiene and poor password practices are still commonplace. The survey was conducted by OnePoll on behalf of AT&T and found that 70% of respondents felt they were knowledgeable about cybersecurity with 69% saying they were… Read More »

Cyber actors are increasingly targeting business associates of HIPAA-covered entities as they provide an easy way to gain access to the networks of multiple healthcare organizations. To help healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) deal with the threat, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has published new guidance on third-party vendor risk management in healthcare. The guidance was… Read More »