New HIPAA guidance Yesterday, December 20th, 2021, the Office for Civil Rights issued new guidance under the Privacy Rule on disclosures of PHI for Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO). Inevitably, this is going to get twisted and contorted by those on the right and the left, so let’s get to the actual ruling and define …
The simplest of hacks… Imagine being able to hack a server simply by pasting a block of text into a chat window. Well, that’s exactly what happened to the game MineCraft’s servers over the weekend. The newly discovered vulnerability is called Log4Shell and it exploits a previously unknown weakness is a common Java library used …
Twenty-Five Fines and Counting Since 2019, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the HIPAA enforcement arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, has been enforcing violations of the rights of patients to have timely access to their medical records. Most recently they levied five fines against various organizations for violations of patients’ rights. …
HIPAA Violations – Twenty-Five Fines and Counting Read More »
It’s that time of year, are you ready? Given the cyber-crime epidemic we are experiencing, it stands to reason this holiday season, historically a peak period for cyber crime, will see a considerable spike in scams. Here’s a list of the top scams to expect, and what to do about them. First on our list …
Traditional trust-based networking is undergoing a massive paradigm shift, affecting you if it hasn’t already. If you think you’re losing your freedoms, no place will that be more evident than in your work environment. This stripping of your computing freedoms is caused by the ransomware and cybercrime epidemic costing US citizens billions of dollars annually. …
Which Employees Require HIPAA Training? The HIPAA Privacy Rule (45 CFR § 164.530) and the HIPAA Security Rule (45 CFR § 164.308) stipulate training should be provided to all members of the workforce not only the ones that have contact with ePHI or PHI. That means not only employees, but also agency staff, consultants, and …
09The FTC has been warning third-party healthcare applications to tighten up their security, and that they are watching. This follows reports from Ponemon Institute and Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report highlighting the healthcare sector experienced more breaches than any other sector. It also follows the massive 2018 data breach experienced by healthcare application MyFitnessPal that …
One of the weaknesses in the human cybersecurity chain is well, we’re human. We make mistakes at various moments, whether we’re being rushed, or curious, We also get lazy, lackadaisical, or otherwise complacent, and when we do, we become vulnerable to an attack. An example would be the simple task of logging out of websites. …
Ransomware continues to evolve in its reach, effectiveness, and sophistication. This week CISA, the FBI, and the NSA issued a joint alert on a strain of ransomware called BlackMatter. Here’s what makes it different, and so dangerous. First, BlackMatter is a RaaS distributed model – Ransomware As A Service. This approach allows anyone with the …
How can a risk assessment be worthless? Risk assessments can be one of the most effective tools in your security arsenal. However, if you get the results and don’t act on them, it’s as good as not doing one at all, and all too often, that is the reality. So how do you actually make …