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Health Care

Unencrypted hospital laptop exposes 2k patient records

Greg Masters May 23, 2012

An employee of the Boston Children's Hospital lost a laptop holding patient information.

IT head fired, ombudsman hired in wake of Utah breach

Dan Kaplan May 16, 2012

An apologetic governor of Utah on Tuesday announced the resignation of the state's executive director of technology services, and the hiring of two others, following a massive breach affecting Medicaid claimants.

ID thieves find gold in medical data

Illena Armstrong May 01, 2012

Is health care a last frontier for today's cyber criminals?

Health hazard: SC Magazine Roundtable

Illena Armstrong May 01, 2012

Health care traditionally, compared with other industries, has lagged in terms of cyber defense, but with attackers now specifically targeting these organizations for patient data, inaction is no longer an option.

Seventeen years worth of Emory patient data missing

Dan Kaplan April 20, 2012

Emory Healthcare in Atlanta lost the personal information of surgery patients treated at its three hospitals when 10 backup discs went missing.

Hospital workers access patient data with fraud in mind

Dan Kaplan April 18, 2012

Thousands of patients of Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Fla. may be at risk for identity theft after two former employees improperly accessed their records.

Number of victims in state of Utah breach significantly rises

Dan Kaplan April 09, 2012

A misconfigured server is to blame for the attack, which impacted roughly 780,000 Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Plan recipients.

Hackers target Medicaid claim forms in Utah

Dan Kaplan April 05, 2012

Hackers, believed to be operating out of Eastern Europe, breached a server at the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) to access thousands of Medicaid records.

Laptop with patient data stolen from Howard University Hospital contractor

Greg Masters March 29, 2012

Letters have gone out to patients of Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., after their personal information was exposed when a laptop was stolen from the car of a contractor.

BlueCross fine over breach related to HIPAA notification rule

Marcos Colon March 15, 2012

The BlueCross BlueShield settlement with the Office for Civil Rights is a reminder for health care organizations to bolster their data security, experts said.

Lawsuits in Sutter Health breach to be rolled into one

Greg Masters March 08, 2012

Following the theft of a computer at Sutter Health in October that put the personal information of more than 4.2 million patients at risk, 11 class-action lawsuits were filed against the Sacramento, Calif.-based nonprofit.

Patient data available on Google, Yahoo due to security mishap

Dan Kaplan February 23, 2012

The health records of more than 30,000 patients at five California hospitals may have been publicly accessible via search engines due to improper server configurations.

Phishing email leads to Denver area health care breach

Dan Kaplan February 07, 2012

Hackers may have accessed the personal health data belonging to patients of Denver area-based Metro Community Provider Network, a nonprofit health care provider for low-income individuals and families.

Patient data at U of M hospital breached

Greg Masters February 06, 2012

A thief broke into a doctor's car and stole a briefcase containing a flash drive that held personal data on patients of University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Indiana University hospital hacked to steal data

Dan Kaplan February 01, 2012

Malware may have allowed attackers to make off with the personal information of thousands of people connected to Indiana University Health Goshen Hospital.

Central Kentucky's largest group practice hit with patient data breach

Greg Masters January 31, 2012

A laptop containing personal information of patients was stolen from the neurology department of Lexington Clinic on the night of Dec. 7, 2011.

Keep taking the tablets...

David Harley, ESET senior research fellow • January 25, 2012

Taking your Android's pulse before you give it access to your health records.

Loma Linda hospital worker fired for taking home private records

Dan Kaplan January 04, 2012

The private medical records belonging to some 1,300 patients and/or their guarantors at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California were compromised when a former hospital employee violated policy.

Getting serious about health care security

Peter Spier, manager of professional services, Fortrex Technologies December 06, 2011

Health care providers and their patients both have parts to play in the high-stakes game of protecting sensitive medical information, especially as technology becomes easier to implement and enforcement of regulations intensifies.

Sutter Health faces lawsuit after lost computer

Dan Kaplan November 23, 2011

The unencrypted data of 4.2 million Sutter Health patients went missing last month, and now the health care providers faces legal action.

Sutter Health loses computer, data on 4.2 million

Dan Kaplan November 16, 2011

Northern California-based Sutter Health is the second major health care organization to fall victim to a major breach of unencrypted data.

Taking a pulse: SC Health Care Roundtable

Illena Armstrong November 01, 2011

Data protection traditionally has lagged at health care organizations when compared to other industry verticals, and emerging technology like mobile devices and cloud computing doesn't make the challenge any easier.

Defense Department facing $4.9B lawsuit over breach

Angela Moscaritolo October 17, 2011

A suit contends that the defendants failed to properly encrypt data, then "intentionally, willfully and recklessly" allowed an untrained individual to access the information.

Delaware pediatric health facility loses data on 1.6 million

Angela Moscaritolo October 11, 2011

Three unencrypted backup tapes containing the personal information of more than a million and a half individuals have gone missing from Nemours, a children's health system in Wilmington, Del.

Lost backup tapes affect 4.9 million current, former military

Dan Kaplan September 29, 2011

One of the largest breaches of the year has struck a military health benefits firm and a major defense contractor, and the data wasn't encrypted because a compliant solution wasn't available.

Losing medical data

David Harley, ESET senior research fellow • September 26, 2011

Apparently, the loss of sensitive medical data is not purely an English disease.

New cybersecurity alliance launches in Massachusetts

Greg Masters September 22, 2011

The Advanced Cyber Security Center will partner businesses and research universities to share threat information and develop more effective defense strategies.

Ontario hospital employee accesses PHI

Angela Moscaritolo September 09, 2011

An employee of North Bay Regional Health Centre in Ontario, Canada accessed without permission the personal health information (PHI) of thousands of patients.

Data of 20k patients of Stanford University hospital exposed

Greg Masters September 08, 2011

A database with data on 20,000 patients at Stanford University's hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. was made available on a website.

More insiders snooping into health records, says survey

Greg Masters August 31, 2011

Breaches into protected health information (PHI) are on the rise, and staffers are responsible for more than a third of the intrusions, a new survey has found.