Data Security

The HHS’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) has published a notification to the healthcare and public health industry concerning a rise in financially inspired zero-day attacks, teaching mitigation strategies that must be implemented to minimize risk to a low and tolerable level. A zero-day attack makes use of a vulnerability for which there isn’t … Read more

JEV Plastic Surgery & Medical Aesthetics based in Owing Mills, MD has began sending notifications to 1,620 patients concerning the exposure of some of their protected health information (PHI) because of a security breach. Malware was discovered which granted an unauthorized individual to gain access to systems that held protected health information. A third-party forensic … Read more

Tech Etch located in Plymouth, MA makes precision-engineered thin metal pieces, versatile printed circuits, and EMI/RFI shielding. It has reported a ransomware attack that resulted in the potential compromise of the personal data and protected health information (PHI) of present and past workers. Firms like Tech Etch wouldn’t commonly be demanded to conform to HIPAA; … Read more

Population health management firm CareATC based in Tulsa, OK, has learned that unauthorized people have accessed the email accounts of two workers and possibly acquired access to the personal data of patients and workers. CareATC started an investigation on June 29, 2021 upon detecting suspicious activity in the email account of a worker. Third-party forensics … Read more

Florida Heart Associates based in Fort Myers, FL encountered a ransomware attack on May 19, 2021 and has brought about significant and ongoing interruption to its services. Medical practice is just running at about 50% capacity for two months since the attack. Interruption is likely to proceed for various more weeks, as it’s not possible … Read more

UofL Health has begun informing 42,465 patients regarding the sending of some of their protected health information (PHI) to the wrong external email address. The healthcare system in Louisville, KY sent breach notification letters to impacted patients on June 7, 2021 instructing them concerning the compromise of some of their PHI. The owner of the … Read more

The Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council (HSCC) has prompted President Biden to give more funds and support to strengthen the cybersecurity posture of the medical care industry to boost toughness against cyberattacks. In the latest letter given to President Biden and replicated to Senate and House party leaders, the HSCC requested additional money … Read more

University of Florida Health Shands has learned that an ex-employee has viewed the health files of 1,562 patients without valid permission. The HIPAA violations were uncovered on April 7, 2021. The provider promptly ended the worker’s access to medical documents pending an investigation. The investigation established that the worker had been accessing patient health records … Read more

Mobile Anesthesiologists fairly recently found out about the exposure of a limited amount of patients’ protected health information (PHI) because of a technical misconfiguration. The problem seemed to have occurred prior to December 14, 2020, and allowed public access of PHI like names, health insurance details, date of service, medical procedure, and dates of birth. … Read more

New London Hospital based in central New Hampshire has identified an unauthorized person who accessed a file on its system in July 2020 and may have gotten the protected health information (PHI) of 34,878 patients. A third-party cybersecurity agency helped investigate the incident and confirmed on February 16, 2021 that the person accessed the file … Read more

The protected health information (PHI) of 29,982 patients of Harvard Eye Associates located in Laguna Hills, CA was potentially stolen due to a cyberattack on its cloud storage provider. The medical and surgical eye care services provider received notification on January 15, 2021 that cyber attackers acquired access to the computer network of its storage … Read more

Roper St. Francis Healthcare has informed 189,761 patients regarding an unauthorized individual who accessed some of their protected health information (PHI) saved in employee email accounts. The provider detected the email security breach in late October 2020. The subsequent investigation confirmed the compromise of three email accounts from October 14 to October 29, 2020. An … Read more

A data security incident at Shore Speciality Consultants Pulmonology Group (SSCPG) has potentially compromised the protected health information (PHI) of 10,000 patients.  SSCPG, based in New Jersey and part of the Shore Physicians Group, released a bulletin outlining the breach. According to the report, on July 8, 2019, SSCPG discovered suspicious activity on their network. … Read more

East Central Indiana School Trust (ECIST) is notifying more than 3,200 individuals that a phishing attack may have compromised their protected health information (PHI). On May 22, 2019, the organization noticed suspicious activity on an employee email account. ECIST immediately took steps to secure the account and revoke the unauthorized access. ECIST launched an investigation … Read more

Presbyterian Healthcare Services is notifying 183,000 patients that an unauthorised individual accessed their personal data.   The hackers gained access to the patient data after successfully fooling several employees into handing over their login credentials through a phishing campaign. The attack occurred on May 6, 2019, and the unauthorised access was not noticed until June … Read more

The Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services (DBHIDS) is notifying 1,500 individuals that their private information may have been exposed after an employee lost an unencrypted laptop.  The employee has been carrying the laptop in a briefcase which they misplaced on public transport. The laptop was password-protected, but not encrypted, so there … Read more

St. Croix Hospice is notifying 21,000 patients that their protected health information (PHI) may have been compromised in a phishing attack. St. Croix Hospice is a provider of hospice care in Minnesota and Wisconsin. On May 10, suspicious email activity was detected on an employee’s email account. St. Croix Hospice contracted a third-party cybersecurity firm … Read more

The City of Griffin, Georgia, has revealed that it made two payments totalling $800,000 to scammers following a series of business email compromise attacks. BEC campaigns are a form of a phishing attack in which the cybercriminal impersonates a high-ranking member of an organisation, such as CEO or CFO, to obtain sensitive information from the … Read more

Boxes of patient medical records have been found abandoned in a former medical centre in the Chatham area of Chicago, Illinois. Clean-up crews have been brought in to assist in the clean-up operation which started hours after Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) requested the emergency clearing of the documents, which contain a wealth of sensitive patient information. … Read more

Franciscan Health is notifying 2,200 patients that their sensitive data may have been compromised in a security incident involving a former employee. Franciscan Health, a health system operating 14 hospitals in Indiana and Illinois, discovered a former employee was accessing the data of 2,200 patients without the appropriate authorization to do so during a routine … Read more

Medical Informatics Engineering Inc (MIE) has agreed to a $100,000 settlement with HHS’s Office for Civil Rights for a 2015 data breach affecting 3.5 million individuals. MIE, an Indiana-based provider of electronic medical record software and services, experienced the data breach when hackers compromised the server of its NoMoreClipboard subsidiary. The hackers had access to … Read more

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has reached a $3 million settlement with Touchstone Medical Imaging following a 2014 data breach. The Franklin, TN-based diagnostic medical imaging services company agreed to the settlement to resolves multiple violations of HIPAA Rules. They have further agreed to adopt a corrective action … Read more

Sextortion scams have become increasingly common in recent years, with record numbers being reported in 2018. These types of attacks are potentially very lucrative for an attacker, due to the highly embarrassing or compromising nature of the material. In many cases, the hacker holds no sensitive information on the individual in question; however, simply the … Read more

A recent survey conducted by OpenVPN highlights the potential cybersecurity risks posed by remote workers. OpenVPN is a virtual private network solution provider that allows businesses to extend their VPNs securely. They surveyed 250 IT leaders, “from the manager level through the C-suite”, to ascertain whether allowing employees to work remotely posed a risk to … Read more

Rutland Regional Medical has revealed that a hacker compromised nine employee email accounts following a cyber attack on their systems. Rutland Regional Medical, based in Rutland City, is the biggest community hospital in Vermont. A staff member discovered the attack on December 21, 2018, after noticing that their email account had been hijacked to send … Read more

Security researchers have discovered a new Trojan horse malware campaign used by hackers to launch attacks on Linux servers. Trojan horses are malware variants that are disguised as benign or useful pieces of software. They are installed under false pretences, as the user if often tricked into believing that they serve a legitimate purpose. Once … Read more

A new global phishing scam has been identified in which hackers target customers of Netflix, the world’s largest streaming organisation. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency of the United States government, issued a warning about the Netflix scam late in December 2018. The phishing scam attempts to fool Netflix subscribers into handing over … Read more

On Wednesday, December 5, 2018, Adobe issued an update to correct a vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player. The vulnerability had been identified in late November by Gigamon, held network visibility and traffic monitoring technology vendor. Qihoo 360, a Chinese internet security company, recently discovered an advanced persistent threat campaign that was exploiting the vulnerability in … Read more

Cancer Centers of America’s Western Regional Medical Center in Bullhead City, Arizona, has recently fallen victim to a phishing attack which has exposed the protected health information (PHI) of over 41,000 individuals. The attack occurred due to one of its employees responding to a phishing email. The email was designed to appear as if it … Read more

Catawba Valley Medical Center (CVMC), a medical center serving the greater Catawba County area based in Hickory, North Carolina, has recently announced that an unauthorised individual gained access to their systems following a successful phishing attack. It is estimated that up to 20,000 people may have been affected by the breach. The discovery was made … Read more

FirstCare Health Plans, a Texan health insurance organisation, has revealed that more than 8,000 of its members may have had some of their personal data breached due to an email error made by one of its staff. The organisation is in the process of notifying 8,056 plan members plan members that may have had some … Read more

Proofpoint, the Californian cybersecurity company, has launched a new Closed-Loop Email Analysis and Response (CLEAR) solution. Proofpoint’s website states that the solution reduces “threat triage time from days to minutes without requiring additional work from human analysts”. Proofpoint CLEAR utilises a complete closed-loop approach to automatically analyse suspicious emails reported by end users to security … Read more

A security researcher released proof-of-concept code that would allow for a user to exploit a flaw in the Windows Task Scheduler. The flaw was discovered by Github user SandboxEscaper, who was also responsible for publishing the proof-of-concept (PoC) code. The flaw, a local privilege escalation vulnerability, was found in the Advanced Local Procedure Call (ALPC) … Read more

Additional evidence has appeared presenting the advantages of healthcare written messaging. A recently published study in the Journal of the American Heart Association obviously indicated that an automatic mHealth interference using Smartphone and text messages tracing applications might prove to be a good approach for rising patients’ physical activity stages. The advantages of rising activity stages, particularly … Read more

After it was first discovered the 2013 Yahoo data violation was quickly found to have affected many of the company’s customers and in December 2016 it was announced that 1 billion accounts had been compromised. In September 2016, prior to that announcement, a separate breach was discovered that affected approximately half a billion email accounts. … Read more

One of Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield’s (Delaware) subcontractors has fallen victim to a ransomware infection and cyberattack that may have put private information relating to almost ninetenn thousand beneficiaries of employer-paid health plans at risk. The attack happened on the 5th of August 2016 at Highmark BCBS subcontractor Summit Reinsurance Services, however affected individuals … Read more

New methods of spreading ransomware are constantly being developed; however, a new ransomware variant discovered by MalwareHunterTeam researchers called “Popcorn Time” appears to use tactics that have never before been seen. When Popcorn Time ransomware has infected a victims device they are given a choice between two options: They can pay the ransom and thereby … Read more