Security
Some 45,000 people are getting HIPAA breach notification letters after a mental health provider failed to encrypt laptops containing medical data and Social Security numbers.
Healthcare industry, listen up: you're a prime target for cyberattacks. Just ask virtually every IT security expert out there. Or ask Anthem, who learned the hard way.
In what might be the biggest data breach ever reported, Anthem, the nation's second largest health insurer, is notifying as many as 80 million members that hackers penetrated its IT systems and swiped personal data.
A New York healthcare provider is notifying its patients that their medical data has been compromised after one of its business associates reported the theft of an employee-owned laptop and unencrypted smartphone.
Health entities must evolve from security by compliance to defending networks and data assets.
The potential cost of breaches for the healthcare industry could be as much as $5.6 billion annually, according to a new report from Experian, a global information services firm. The report is Experian's second annual data breach forecast across industries.
It was, as always, an eventful year for the health information technology industry, everywhere from hospitals to physician practices, vendor headquarters to the halls of Congress. 2014 was marked by big stories about ICD-10, privacy and security, patient safety, interoperability and more. We spotlight some of them here.
A critical access hospital in southern Illinois was targeted by an unknown party with access to protected health information, who threatened to release more data unless a "substantial" ransom payment was made.
Perhaps CD-ROMs are not the best storage media when it comes to safeguarding the health information of your patients -- especially when one of your staff members accidentally donates them to a children's art project, as what recently happened at a Virginia-based health system.
The risk of experiencing a data breach "is higher than ever," according to Experian's second annual industry forecast, which shows how the "consistently high value of healthcare data on the black market" means there will be little respite for an industry already beleaguered by cyber threats.