Healthcare entities now have to take protection of Patient Health Information much more seriously than ever before- because non-compliance with HIPAA can now attract a whole range penalties, both civil and criminal., The Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, better known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule put forth a set of national standards…
Even as healthcare users hope for better security fortheir health information, and healthcare providers resolve to strengthen measures for data security, this New Year seems to have started with a spate of data breach incidents, yet again highlighting the fact thatthere is not much improvement in the healthcare industry’s data security scene. A wave of…
Regardless of size, covered entities need to take action and will be held accountable for safeguarding their patients’ health information. This is a fact that the non-profit Hospice of North Idaho learnt the hard way. In the first of its kind, a federal investigation of a health information breach, that affected fewer than 500 individuals…
The number of data breaches in the healthcare industry seems to be steadily rising. Two more incidents have now been added to the long list of breaches. According to Sacremento TV station KCRA, the state of California posted the Social Security Numbers of nearly 14,000 Medical providers working for the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), by…
Curbing data breaches is still an unachieved target for the healthcare industry, according to two reports published by the Ponemon Institute and the Health Information Trust Alliance last week. In their third annual study on patient privacy and data security, Ponemon’s Institute determined that almost 94 percent of the 80 healthcare organizations that participated in…
No company is guarded from security threats. This seems to be the norm with hackers finding new targets every day, the latest being Barnes & Noble. It has come to light that hackers have stolen credit card information of customers who shopped at 63 Barnes & Noble stores across the country even as early as…
While the hacker attacks on big banks generated headlines and attracted mass attention, hackers – this time from across borders, made the most of this opportunity to execute a well-planned attack of a much more serious nature. Although this appears unrelated to the bank attacks, hackers in this case infiltrated the databases of the South…
The tally of healthcare information breaches seems to be steadily increasing despite security regulations and associated legal action. The breach tally is soon to exceed 20 million once three recent breach incidents are added. With 410 incidents affecting nearly 19.2 million individuals since September 2009, the breach tally is now already at a record high.…
The health industry is continuously plagued by one major threat which has been the cause for most security breaches in the recent past: The loss or theft of unencrypted devices. Updates to the federal tally of health information breaches clearly indicate that lost or stolen unencrypted computing devices are an ongoing problem with at least…
With more and more health records going digital, the wide range of data breaches seems to be growing at a steady pace. If you thought that protecting health data was costly and compliance with HIPAA complicated, a breach of health data information can turn out to be a lot more cumbersome and expensive! The AvMved Breach…
