In its second HIPAA enforcement action for 2017, HHS has slapped an insurer with a $2.2 million settlement in the wake of a relatively small breach, citing the company's lack of timely corrective action.
HHS has issued new health data privacy guidance and announced a contest to create an online "model privacy notice generator." Plus, it's issued a reminder about the importance of reviewing and securing audit logs to help prevent and detect breaches.
Although HIPAA requires healthcare organizations to conduct a periodic security risk analysis focused on systems containing PHI, larger entities should also perform more comprehensive security self-assessments, advises CISO David Loewy of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, who explains his approach.
A physician who used her patients' information to aid her successful 2015 campaign for Virginia state senator in violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule won't be sanctioned by federal regulators.
In a reminder of HIPAA's tough requirements for breach notification, federal regulators have issued a $475,000 financial settlement and corrective action plan for Chicago-based Presence Health tied to its tardy notification for a 2013 paper records breach affecting only about 800 individuals.
The transition to a new presidential administration makes forecasting for HIPAA enforcement activity in 2017 difficult, says privacy attorney David Holtzman of the consultancy Cynergistek, who sizes up what the HHS Office for Civil Rights might do this year.
Intellectual property and protected health information are both extremely valuable to cybercriminals, which is why hackers are increasingly targeting healthcare organizations. Increasingly, patients, providers, pharmaceutical companies and others are relying heavily on mobile devices to exchange sensitive information,...
The hack of health insurer Anthem exposes data on 80 million Americans. A breach of an electronic health records vendor affects dozens of clinics. A California hospital pays a ransom to get data decrypted by hackers. These and other headline-grabbing breaches are getting the attention of CEOs and boards of directors....
In the on-prem world, companies needed experts for each major area of IT provenance: hardware, networking, systems administration, security, operating systems, virtualization, workload balancing, data integration, data cleansing and quality, and then all the function-specific applications that drive everyday business...
Does your organization really have a clear idea of what measures your business associates are taking to safeguard your most sensitive data? Yet another breach, this one affecting Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield, points to the risks.
The U.S. House has passed a bill aimed at accelerating the advancement of medical innovation that contains a controversial provision calling for significant changes to the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
HITRUST says a growing number of healthcare organizations, seeking to improve risk management, are requiring that their business associates comply with its Common Security Framework. But some experts question whether that's a viable strategy.
Recent breaches and regulatory audits have sharpened the focus on third-party risks. How are healthcare entities tackling this critical topic of business associate management? Attorney David Szabo shares insights.
When it comes to health data breaches, business associates are again grabbing headlines, calling attention to the importance of scrutinizing vendors. The latest incident involves a breach that wasn't reported to a covered entity for eight months.
After helping a hospital to pass an audit that assessed compliance with requirements of the HITECH Act "meaningful use" electronic health record incentive program, CISO Mitch Stewart offers this audit prep advice: Beef up your risk assessment.
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