Tag: Privacy & Security

Ireland’s health service IT system has been shut down as a precautionary measure, following a cyber attack today. The Health Service Executive (HSE) believes the attack is by international criminals attempting to extort money, although no demand has yet been received. HSE confirmed there had been “a significant ransomware attack on the HSE IT systems”

In a recent Healthcare IT News feature story, health IT leaders talked about some of the lessons they've learned from a very busy and tumultuous year – and how they're applying those lessons for 2021 and beyond. Among the many lessons they described – many having spent 2020 waging a two-front battle against the COVID-19 pandemic

French health insurance company Mutuelle Nationale des Hospitaliers (MNH) has experienced a ransomware attack that has disrupted the company’s healthcare operations.  Ransomware operation, RansomExx, a rebranded version of Defray777 ransomware is behind the attack. Some of the group’s high-profile attacks include Brazil’s government networks, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and Tyler Technologies.   The mnh.fr website now displays

Seqster, which develops tools for patient-generated longitudinal health records – incorporating EHR information, genomic profiles, wearable device data and more – has launched the most recent version of its platform on Microsoft Azure cloud. WHY IT MATTERS Seqster Platform v7.1 is a HIPAA- and FDA 21 CFR PART 11-compliant multi-cloud platform. It features new security,

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs notified its beneficiaries on Monday that a data breach has exposed the personal information of approximately 46,000 veterans. According to the VA’s Office of Management, an online application used by the agency’s Financial Services Center was accessed by unauthorized users in an attempt to divert payments to community care

As medical professionals continue in their quest to learn more about the strange and unpredictable novel coronavirus, research is moving at a rapid pace – with robust and widespread data sharing a key component. But security concerns are a major sticking point, as scientists and researchers weigh what data, and how much of it, to

IBM this week launched Rapid Supplier Connect, a blockchain-based network it says can help healthcare organizations, whether hospitals or government agencies, address equipment shortages during the pandemic by helping them find alternative suppliers. WHY IT MATTERS Northwell Health, the largest healthcare provider in the state hardest hit by COVID-19, and the Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

New Jersey’s Hackensack Meridian Health has been forced to pay up following a ransomware attack, the health system said on Friday, according to a report in the Asbury Park Press. WHY IT MATTER The undisclosed sum paid out by the health system, one of the state’s largest, is covered by an insurance plan that helps

In 2018, the average cost of a healthcare breach is almost $4M in the US and statistics from 2016 showed that of all the industries in the world, 88% of the cyberattacks are actually happening in healthcare. In the context of the ever-increasing cybersecurity threats in healthcare, Lori Lazzara, VP of Technology & Engineering, Monitoring

About five years ago, PeaceHealth, a 16,000-caregiver healthcare provider in the Pacific Northwest with 10 hospitals and 250 ambulatory clinics, began a focused effort to meet the compliance standards of the HIPAA role-based access requirements. THE PROBLEM At the same time, the provider organization invested $300 million in converting the electronic health records of its

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recently announced the appointment of a Public Sector Data Security Review Committee to conduct a comprehensive review of data security practices across the entire public service. The committee will look at measures and processes related to the collection and protection of citizens’ personal data by public sector agencies, as

The Health Sciences Authority (HSA), a statutory board under the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Singapore, said in a statement on March 15 that one of its vendors, Secur Solutions Group Pte Ltd (SSG), had failed to properly secure a HSA database against access over the Internet. The database contained registration-related information of 808,201 blood

Data breaches are happening everywhere these days, not just in healthcare. But the healthcare industry has its own set of problems when it comes to the aftermath of a security incident: unknown impact and the rise in medical fraud. “It’s a rampant problem, and it’s not talked about enough,” said Chris Bowen, ClearDATA founder and

HealthHub, a one-stop portal and mobile application for Singaporeans to access a wide range of health content, rewards and e-services, which was launched in 2015, had experienced a series of unauthorised log-ins, according to the Health Promotion Board’s (HPB) recent statement. The portal is an initiative by the Ministry of Health, and Health Promotion Board,

It's an inconvenient truth that much of healthcare still runs on legacy software. Whether it's operating systems or medical devices, the security implications of depending on vulnerable and unsupported technologies are serious, putting HIPAA compliance and patient safety at risk. But even recent software has its flaws, of course, and new zero day vulnerabilities are

UnityPoint Health is notifying 1.4 million patients that their records may have been breached when its business system was compromised by a phishing attack. This is the second breach for UnityPoint this year. In April, another phishing attack on staff email accounts at its Madison campus breached the data of 16,000 patients. According to the notice,

Two employees of Tennessee-based Alive Hospice fell for phishing attacks, which potentially breached patient data for one to four months. During a review of their email system on May 15, officials discovered unauthorized access to two separate employee email accounts that began on December 2017 for one account and around April 5 for the other.