From OCR to AI The Future of Media and Image Analysis in eDiscovery
HHS Office for Civil Rights Director Melanie Fontes Rainer on Progress and News at OCR
ERISA Blog | Changes to the HIPAA Privacy Rules A Primer for Self-Insured Group Health Plans
Podcast - Data Privacy and Tracking Technology Compliance
Patient Data and Privacy
2022 DSIR Deeper Dive: OCR’s Right of Access Initiative
HIPAA Tips With Williams Mullen - Telehealth After the Pandemic
Relaxed HIPAA Restrictions For Providers Using Telehealth
Webinar: Investigating and Resolving Sexual Assaults on Campus
In today’s healthcare environment, compliance is a defining element of patient care quality, operational integrity, and public trust. Oversight from agencies such as the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the Centers for Medicare...more
Government regulators are seemingly as numerous as the stars nowadays, especially in the universe of data incidents. When organizations experience a data incident, they will need to quickly assess what happened, why it...more
On December 1, 2022, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a Bulletin on the obligations of covered entities and business associates (regulated entities) under the...more
Most companies operating websites and mobile apps use some form of tracking technologies on these digital properties. While these types of technologies have been used for some time and serve a variety of purposes, the use of...more
For years, patients and healthcare companies have been wrestling with privacy issues relating to cookies, pixels and other tracking technologies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Civil Rights...more
Report on Patient Privacy 22, no. 6 (June, 2022) - A report from the HHS Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center (HC3) found that in early 2022, ransomware groups increasingly turned to legitimate software during...more
CYBERSECURITY - GAO Report Identifies Need for DOE to Address Risks to Electrical Distribution System - The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently completed and published a study on electricity...more
Report on Patient Privacy 18, no. 1 (January 2021) - The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) settled its 13th enforcement action in its Right of Access Initiative, first announced in 2019 to support individuals’ rights to...more
CYBERSECURITY - HHS Issues Update to Ransomware Threat Alert to Health Care Sector - The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) issued a health care and public...more
Report on Patient Privacy 20, no. 11 (November 2020) - In her 14-plus years of investigating and blogging about hacking and breaches, “Dissent” has been yelled at, threatened with lawsuits and accused of being a criminal....more
CYBERSECURITY - Patching Gets More and More Complicated but Is Critical for Managing Risk - Patching vulnerabilities has always been challenging, but these days, it is getting more and more complicated as...more
Health insurer Anthem, Inc. has finally reached a settlement with a coalition of 41 states plus the District of Columbia, and a separate settlement with California, to resolve state attorney general investigations of a data...more
Adult Streaming Site Leaves 7TB of Users’ Information Unsecured - Live adult streaming website CAM4 has reportedly not secured 7TB of users’ information, which may be able to be used for blackmail and identity theft...more
Natural Gas Compressor Facility Shut Down After Ransomware Attack - The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced this week that a ransomware attack shut down a natural gas compressor facility for two days. While in...more
Researchers at Sentinel One and Dragos have detected malicious code, called EKANS or Snake, that has been designed specifically to target industrial control systems (ICS), including those of oil refineries, manufacturing...more
Editors’ Note: This is the fourth in our fourth-annual end-of-year series examining important trends in data privacy and cybersecurity in the coming year. Our previous entry discussed the CCPA, energy, and Brexit. Up next:...more
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services imposed a $1.6 million civil money penalty (CMP) against the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, Department of Aging and Disability...more
Although many thought that WannaCry was in the rear view mirror, a recent report by Artemis, based on client experience, found that health care organizations and manufacturing companies are still being hit with the ransomware...more
According to Hiscox’s Third Cyber Readiness Report, which surveyed 5,400 firms in the U.S. and the E.U., cyber threats have “become the unavoidable cost of doing business today.” The Report notes that for the first time, “a...more
We previously reported that Cottage Health, a health care entity operating several hospitals in California, settled with the State of California for $2 million for a security incident that occurred in 2013. On February 7,...more
Data privacy and security legislation and enforcement saw significant activity in 2018 and early 2019. McDermott’s 2018 Digital Health Year in Review: Focus on Data report – the first in a four-part series – highlights...more
A Florida staffing agency which provides physicians to hospitals and nursing homes, has agreed to a $500,000 settlement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. The settlement comes...more
On October 15, 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that Anthem, Inc. will pay $16 million to settle OCR’s investigation of its potential violations of the Health...more
This week the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an investigative report that outlined cyber incidents that nine public companies had experienced, causing fraudulent losses totaling more than $100 million. The...more
We all remember Kronos—the malicious malware that was sold by Russian underground forums in 2014 for $7,000. If you bought it, you were promised updates and development of new modules. The Kronos developers recently released...more