Data Security

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

A security flaw in a patient portal has exposed information concerning patient claims. Claims information had previously been uploaded to the patient portal of Molina Healthcare, which is a managed care company based in Long Beach, California. This in itself is not abnormal, however the flaw meant that the information was in fact accessible without … Read more

Patch Tuesday 2016: Microsoft has acted to fix 68 vulnerabilities including 6 that had been rated critical. The updates have been spread over fourteen security bulletins. The updates include fixes for 2 vulnerabilities that are presently being actively exploited including the CVE-2016-7255 vulnerability that was announced by Google in October 2016. Google decided to announce … Read more

Numerous email compromise tactics have for some time been in use by scammers to trick business executives into making fraudulent wire transfers. Recently, a Symantec security specialist has observed that some scammers have begun taking a new approach in order to increase BEC scams’ rate of success. The biggest problem that the scammers face is … Read more

If yours is one of many businesses which depend upon Microsoft Security Bulletins to remain informed about new patches and fixes to known vulnerabilities, you and your colleagues should prepare yourselves for an upcoming change in the way Microsoft announces security fixes. In blog post in late 2016, Microsoft confirmed that its Security Bulletins would … Read more

According to IT Security researchers, MacOS malware is now being spread by malicious Word macros. This is the first occasion on which MacOS malware has been recognised as having been used to spread this attack vector. Windows users can anticipate that they are vulnerable to attack with malware, however until now Mac users have stayed … Read more

A ransomware attack on an LA Valley College on the 6th of January, 2017 lead to student data being locked and resulted in some 1,800 college staff – both administrators and teachers – being unable to gain access to their computer system and essential work files. Ransomware is a form of malicious software. The purpose … Read more

The culprits responsible for Locky ransomware have begun using data obtained in the OPM data breaches of 2014 and 2015 in a new campaign designed to spread cryptoransomware. It remains unknown exactly how much data was obtained, however in total, around 22 million user records were stolen in the OPM breach. The spam emails, sent … Read more

Malware infections over the Christmas holiday period are something to be expected. Every year as the number of online shoppers increases, the number of Windows malware infections increases with them. Data from Enigma Software Group (ESG) indicates that between Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2015, the rate of malware infections was 84% higher than … Read more

E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) has confirmed that it has been subject to an attempted extortion after a hacker successfully infiltrated one of its game servers. The incident enabled the hacker to steal the player profiles and other data of 1.5 million users. The hack was carried out on the 27th of December 2016. The attacker … Read more

LeakedSource has claimed that email addresses, usernames, and passwords have been accessed by the hackers responsible for a recent Dailymotion cyberattack. Dailymotion is one of the biggest internet video sharing platforms and, according to Alexa, is the world wide web’s 113th most popular site. Dailymotion recorded 148 million hits in April 2015. The cyberattack is … Read more

Cybercriminals responsible for a ransomware attack against a Sherriff’s office in Arkansas have received payment of 3 Bitcoin ($2,400) to supply the relevant keys to decrypt files that had been locked by the ransomware. Carrol County Sheriff’s office was the victim of a ransomware attack on the 5th of December, 2016 which resulted in its … Read more

Kaiser Permanente is alerting a few of its associates of a website formation mistake that led to the revelation of a few of their safeguarded health information. Luckily, the mistake was swiftly known and ePHI was just revealed for about 2 hours. On October 12, 2016, an upgrading to the site, Kp.org was carried out … Read more

The Division of Health and Human Services’ OCR has lately distributed guidance for HIPAA covered entities on ransomware to assist protected bodies trade with the enhanced danger of ransomware assaults. Recently the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has cautioned companies that they should do more to cope with the ransomware danger. The failure to apply proper safeguards against … Read more

August was a regretful month for healthcare files breaks. Over 8.8 million health plan member and patient files were stolen or exposed. 8,804,608 to be exact. As per the up-to-date segment of the Protenus Break Indicator, the total quantity of healthcare files exposed or stolen this summer now surpasses 20 million. In August, 44 break … Read more

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has circulated the outcomes of its yearly healthcare cybersecurity analysis. The report demonstrates that healthcare companies are using a range of methods to enhance their safety posture as well as keep confidential files safeguarded. But, several companies are failing to use fundamental cybersecurity skills to avoid illegal … Read more

A huge data break has been informed by a Phoenix AZ-based healthcare company which has possibly affected 3.7 million people. The assault is the 2nd biggest cyberattack informed thus far in 2016, just second to previous month’s 9.3 million highest break on an as of yet unverified health underwriter. Early accounts of the assault on Banner … Read more

Throughout the last few weeks, huge data dumps occurred from extraordinary cyberattacks on MySpace, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. More lately, in excess of 33 million mutilated Twitter accounts were registered online for sale. These accounts are thought to have been mutilated making use of the records gotten in the LinkedIn break. Provided the quantity of healthcare … Read more

Earlier this year, Stamford Podiatry Group P.C., has found out that an illegal third party accessed to its computer systems for a period of nearly 2 months. The intruder was capable to see company data and possibly accessed the electronic medicinal record (EMR) database also. 40,491 patients have now been informed of the secrecy break … Read more

Roughly 1K patients in Southern Arizona have received notices of a break of safeguarded health information after the thievery of a doctor’s record. The record had been dumped in the automobile of a doctor who performed for Emergency Medicine Associates, which delivered ER staff for Carondelet Health Network hospices in Tucson. A burglar broke into … Read more

Sylvia Matthews Burwell, HHS Secretary has publicized the release of the ultimate Data Safety Policy Rules Framework for the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) which was introduced by President Obama in the early part of 2015. The Security Principles Framework was upgraded to assist healthcare companies that take part in the PMI know the safety measures that should … Read more

Every month the Division of Veteran Matters issues a statement to Congress on the info safety cases experienced by Veteran Affairs (VA) services during the month. Protected health information (PHI) disclosures increased substantially in April, with 2,105 old-timers’ PHI being unintentionally exposed or disclosed. In total, 2556 old-timers were affected by information safety cases in … Read more

As per an advisory released by the Division of Homeland Security, an admired drug cabinet system has been discovered to have more than 1,400 weaknesses, a lot of which might be abused distantly using freely available activities. Additionally, the abuses might be carried out by an aggressor with a miserable degree of talent. The admired drug cabinet … Read more

The illegal sharing of secret health info on Facebook has led to a 911 dispatcher losing her job, however that might not be the conclusion of it. The patient whose secrecy was breached thinks the loss of service isn’t punishment sufficient for the secrecy privacy breach and desires criminal accusations to be submitted for the secrecy infringement. … Read more

During late November, a member of the public found many documents at a recycling center which seemed to have come from hospitals administrated by Community Mercy Health Partners. The documents included complete info concerning patients who had gotten medical services between 2005 and 2013. The info in the documents contained patients’ names, physicians’ names, health … Read more

St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital has released a media declaration providing more information on the 29,156-record data infringement that happened on October 31, 2015. The hospital has clarified that the infringement happened when an unknown person entered a top-secret space of the hospital and thieved a thumb drive having a limited amount of patient data. The device … Read more

Centene Corporation, Wisconsin-based health insurer, has declared the loss of 6 unencrypted computer hard drives having the safeguarded health information of roughly 950,000 of its members. The hard drives were being utilized for a job to make better the health results of plan members. The persons affected by the security infringement had all received laboratory … Read more

New West Health Services has begun informing 25,000 patients concerning the loss of a password-protected, unencrypted laptop containing wide-ranging Protected Health Information. Latest West Health Services Data Infringement Affects 25,000 Patients   New West Health Services, a not-for-profit provider of subsidized health policies, including Medicare Supplement and Medicare Advantage plans, has informed the thievery of … Read more

An infringement of PHI caused by a worker of a business partner who fell for a telephone phishing fraud has been informed by Blue Shield of California. Nearly 21,000 people have been influenced by the security infringement. Insurers and healthcare providers must conduct staff training to make sure workers are conscious of the danger of … Read more

Arnett Hospital of Indiana University Health has notified 29,324 patients concerning the possible revelation of their Protected Health Information (PHI) following an unencrypted flash drive vanished from its emergency division. The flash drive was found to be lost on November 20, 2015, and an inspection was instantly started. Work is continuing to try to find … Read more