HIPAA Blog
One Virus, Two Ways
How Scammers Are Using the Coronavirus to Trick Their Victims As if the fear of the Coronavirus outbreak weren’t enough to have the world on edge, there’s a new way that the virus is impacting humans: through email cyber-attacks. The method of contamination takes a trusted name, the World Health Organization, and uses it to …
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Sharing Safely During an Emergency
When an emergency situation occurs, like that of the recent Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak that is said to have originated in mainland China, the healthcare industry is affected worldwide. From the individual patients all the way up to the largest facilities for patient care, it’s imperative to share knowledge and information, but it MUST be …
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Healthcare Data Breaches Affected 40 Million Americans in 2019
40 Million The US state with the highest population is California. At the end of 2019, it was 39.56 million. That’s A LOT of people, right? Yes. However, according to the recent study published by Fortified Health Security, 40 MILLION Americans were affected by a healthcare data breach in 2019 alone. That represents an increase …
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Windows 7 End of Life Creates New Opportunities for Scammers
End of Windows 7 They say when one door closes another one opens, but in this case, it’s a window. On January 14th, 2020, Microsoft ended its support for Windows 7. Since Microsoft is no longer offering patches or security updates for vulnerabilities identified in Windows 7, hackers have a new way of gaining access …
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2019 HIPAA Breach Reporting Deadline Approaching
2019 HIPAA Breach Reporting Deadline If in 2019 you had a HIPAA breach that affected fewer than 500 individuals, you must report that to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by Saturday, February 29, 2020. Not sure if you’ve had an incident that requires reporting? Start by knowing that every breach must …
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Cybercriminals Now Demanding Ransoms from Patients
Imagine this: One day, out of the blue, you receive an unusual communication from an unknown individual warning YOU that they have photos and personal information about you that they are prepared to release if you don’t pay them a ransom. At first, you might chuckle thinking, there is no way this is true. But …
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Protecting Patients – More Than Meets the Eye
Don’t Overlook It When you consider a healthcare organization’s role in protecting patients, it’s easy to look at things from a high-level and miss out on some of the most critical protections an individual needs, expects and is owed. For example, when I think about protecting patients, my mind goes directly to the reason behind …
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Lost Laptop Leads to New Kind of Accident
Fender Bender In Carroll County, Georgia, there was a vehicle accident of an unusual kind recently. It resulted in the Department of Health & Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) slapping a $65,000 fine on West Georgia Ambulance when they were found to have multiple violations of HIPAA rules. It started in February of …
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Healthcare’s Annual Physical
Annual Physical We’ve conducted our end of year physical on the healthcare industry, and while the humans that are cared for have a variety of health issues, there is one that is plaguing the healthcare industry as a whole: cybersecurity. This was not a good year for hospitals and healthcare businesses when it came to …
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OCR Issues Guidance on Targeted Ransomware
We Are All Affected by Bad Cyber Health Pay attention, the health of your business depends on it. Wherever you fall in the food chain of the healthcare industry, cybersecurity needs to be at the forefront of your mind. That might mean you are a small doctor’s office with a few patients, a large hospital, …
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