The Department of Health and Human Services has slapped Excellus Health Plan with a $5.1 million settlement in the wake of a 2015 data breach that affected more than 9.3 million individuals.
Hacking incidents, including ransomware and phishing attacks, as well as security incidents involving vendors dominated the federal tally of major health data breaches in 2020.
As federal regulators intensify their focus on compliance with requirements to provide patients with access to their health information, healthcare organizations need to sort through a variety of emerging challenges, says health information management and privacy expert Rita Bowen.
The growth in the use of telehealth during the COVID-19 crisis means that healthcare providers must carefully reassess and bolster the security of the connected devices, applications and systems used, says Kelly Rozumalski of the consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton.
In the year ahead, healthcare organizations must be prepared to face an assortment of advancing security threats, including those that damage the integrity of critical patient data, says Rod Piechowski of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
The COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted an array of evolving patient privacy issues that legislators and regulators will need to address in the year ahead, say government policy experts Mari Savickis and Cassie Leonard of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.
Under legislation passed by Congress this weekend that awaits President Trump's signature, HIPAA enforcers, when considering financial penalties for compliance violations, would need to determine whether an organization had implemented "recognized security practices," such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
Because 2020 wasn't already exciting enough, now we have to worry about being hunted by adversaries wielding FireEye's penetration testing tools, thanks to the company having suffered a big, bad breach. Here's a list of targeted flaws that every organization should ensure they've patched.
If FireEye - one of the top cybersecurity firms - can't protect itself, how can clients be sure anything from anyone will keep them safe? The myth of a "secured environment" has been revealed to be exactly that.
Are insurers getting cold feet over covering losses to ransomware? With claims due to ransomware skyrocketing, some insurers have reportedly been revising offerings to make it tougher for companies to claim for some types of cybercrime, including extortion.
A recent data breach at a Colorado-based mental health clinic that exposed data on nearly 300,000 individuals is the latest of several in the mental health sector this year.
Warning to workers: Your productivity tools may also be tracking your workplace productivity, and your bosses may not even know it. But as more workplace surveillance capabilities appear, legal experts warn that organizations must ensure their tools do not violate employees' privacy rights.
Blockchain technology has been floated as a solution to enable remote, electronic voting. But MIT researchers say today's paper-based systems, while imperfect, are still the most reliable way to prove to voters that their selections have been accurately cast and tallied.
The Department of Health and Human Services last week issued its 10th settlement involving a HIPAA "right of access" case since launching its patient records access initiative last year. But how might HIPAA enforcement priorities at HHS' Office for Civil Rights change under a Biden administration?
In the latest health data breach enforcement action by a state, New Jersey regulators have slapped a supermarket cooperative with a large settlement for improper disposal of customer pharmacy information.
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