A thousand incidents and counting, the federal health breach tally hits an all-time high, now listing 1,010 major breaches reported since federal regulators started to track them in September 2009 after the HITECH Act came into effect. These breaches have together affected 31.5 million individuals. The noteworthy fact is that out of these, more than…
While the healthcare industry looks at 2014 as the year to strengthen breach prevention and data protection initiatives, experts predict that Healthcare breach suits will be common this year. And true to this fact, dozens of lawsuits have already been filed in the case of the Target breach, which involved theft of two unencrypted laptop…
With contributions of a few mega healthcare data breaches in 2013, the number of individuals affected now is more than twice the number in 2012. While three recent breaches that grabbed the headlines have not yet been added to the official 2013 tally, once the number of affected individuals is confirmed, the breach tally for…
There has been enough and more said about the importance of encryption in safeguarding protected health information (PHI). But data breaches resulting due to lack of encryption continue to fill up the ‘wall of shame’, with the latest addition being a breach reported by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield. This incident involved the theft of…
The HIPAA breach notification rule came into effect in September 2009. According to federal authorities, in these four years, the ‘Wall of Shame’ has seen 674 major breaches that affected a total of 27 million individuals. Although the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has been vigorously carrying out HIPAA…
