Employees and human error often top the list as the healthcare sector’s biggest threat. Considering they are the catalyst for clicking malicious links, engaging with targeted phishing campaigns and mistakenly sending emails to the wrong recipient, it’s easy to place the blame on human error, as explained by Jessica Davis in HealthITSecurity. Where’s Your Perimeter? Just 10 years ago, healthcare organizations took security as the need to wrap some kind of security around the p

Ransomware continued to target the healthcare sector, while phishing attacks and insider errors lead to some of the biggest breaches in 2018. It is expected that hackers will continue to pummel the sector with targeted attacks through 2019 and beyond. To learn from the security incidents of the year, we count down 2018’s biggest data breaches in the healthcare sector, as reported by Jessica Davis at HealthITSecurity. 10. HealthEquity: 190,000 Individuals The data of about 19

A phishing attack on Georgia Spine and Orthopedics of Atlanta potentially compromised the personal health information of over 7,000 patients. According to officials, an unauthorized user hacked into an email account, after an employee opened up a phishing email. The hacker used the attack to steal the employee’s email account password. Upon discovery, access to the account was terminated and officials hired a forensics team to investigate. Due to the email account configurati

Imagine representatives from the Office of Civil Rights showing up at your practice unannounced, requesting to review your HIPAA compliance procedures. It can happen if you’re chosen for a random Audit. Other audits give healthcare providers just 10 days to prepare. Even if you aren’t chosen for a random HIPAA audit, you can still face penalties for noncompliance, stemming from e a patient complaint or breach. So, taking the opportunity to proactively strengthen your privacy

Allergy Associates of Hartford, P.C. (Allergy Associates), has agreed to pay $125,000 to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and to adopt a corrective action plan to settle potential HIPAA violations. Allergy Associates is comprised of three physicians at four locations across Connecticut. In February 2015, a patient of Allergy Associates contacted a local television station to speak about a dispute that had occurred be

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched this week its Amazon Comprehend Medical machine learning service that enables healthcare professionals and developers to mine unstructured medical text and patient data, such as diagnosis, treatments, dosages, symptoms, and other signs of disease. The new service helps healthcare professionals improve clinical decision support, streamline revenue cycle and clinical trials management, and better meet data privacy and HIPAA requirements. Amazo

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published its semi-annual regulatory agenda. In addition to proposed rules on fraud and abuse, drug pricing, digital health, and devices, the agenda included topics that could bring significant changes to HIPAA regulations and other health care privacy rules. The National Law Review outlined three changes potentially affecting HIPAA: 1) The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to release a proposal