A Baltimore medical center that suffered a ransomware attack a month ago and pulled its electronic health record system offline as a precaution is finally beginning to restore access to the system, the organization's CEO says. It's the latest example of how cyberattacks can derail EHRs.
As federal regulators intensify their focus on compliance with requirements to provide patients with access to their health information, healthcare organizations need to sort through a variety of emerging challenges, says health information management and privacy expert Rita Bowen.
In the year ahead, healthcare organizations must be prepared to face an assortment of advancing security threats, including those that damage the integrity of critical patient data, says Rod Piechowski of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
Cybersecurity professionals operate in a dynamic environment driven by two accelerating forces; threat developments and the rapid adoption of new technologies. And yet most companies still rely on discrete snapshots of their security performance.
Healthcare organizations must cope with both forces - they have...
The Department of Health and Human Services last week issued its 10th settlement involving a HIPAA "right of access" case since launching its patient records access initiative last year. But how might HIPAA enforcement priorities at HHS' Office for Civil Rights change under a Biden administration?
Many healthcare organizations are failing to address shortcomings in security risk management for their supply chains, says former healthcare CIO David Finn, describing findings of a recent study assessing the state of cybersecurity in the sector.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is seeking answers about an apparent ransomware incident at Universal Health Services that knocked out access to the hospital chain's U.S. IT network for nearly two weeks.
A 2014 data breach at Community Health Systems that exposed the protected health information of 6.1 million individuals has led to another round of government penalties. This time, the Franklin, Tennessee-based company has agreed to pay $5 million for a settlement with 28 state attorneys general.
In an exclusive interview, Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, which enforces HIPAA, spells out critical steps healthcare organizations must take to safeguard patient information and ensure patient safety in light of the surge in ransomware and other hacking incidents.
As the compliance dates approach for the Department of Health and Human Services' information blocking and health IT interoperability final rules, organizations need to avoid potential pitfalls, says privacy attorney Adam Greene.
The eHealth Initiative and the Center for Democracy and Technology are seeking feedback on their draft privacy framework that addresses gaps in legal protections for consumer health data falling outside of HIPAA's regulatory umbrella, says eHI CEO Jennifer Covich Bordenick.
What privacy and security issues are raised by patients using smartphone apps to access health records? Attorney Helen Oscislawski and security expert Jarrett Kolthoff offer an analysis.
The Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights plans to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking to modify the HIPAA rules before the end of the year, says Timothy Noonan, the agency's deputy director for health information privacy.
Several health IT industry groups are urging the FTC to update its health data breach notification rule, designed to cover health data not protected under HIPAA, to better address technological developments and regulatory gaps that have evolved since the rule was implemented a decade ago.
Never store hardcoded credentials in code uploaded to public-facing GitHub repositories, and make sure none of your business associates are doing that. Those are just two takeaways from a new report that describes how nine organizations were inadvertently exposing health records for at least 150,000 patients.
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