By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow On September 20, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights announced a fine of $999,000 for three Boston hospitals, all of which violated HIPAA while allowing ABC’s TV series “Boston Med” to film the show in their facilities. Boston Medical Center (BMC), Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow A lot can happen in 5 years, and unfortunately, not always for the better. According to a recent report by Juniper Research, Cybercrime & the Internet of Threats 2018, data breaches are expected to reach 146 billion records over the next five years. For cybercriminals to successfully compromise such an extreme number…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow Small businesses are often thought to be a forgotten entity when it comes to cybercrime. On the surface, it seems like a fair assumption that hackers wouldn’t target small businesses when there are large enterprises with much greater assets. Unfortunately, many small business leaders fall for this “I’m not a target” mentality,…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow A recent survey conducted by the health insurance company Aetna revealed some significant results as to what consumers consider to be their most important concern in terms of healthcare. According to the survey of 1,000 consumers, concerns of patient privacy and data security are more important than the cost of care. 80%…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow Phishing is a cybercrime that has been around for many years, where targets are sent malicious emails claiming to be from a legitimate individual or organization to trick them into disclosing their sensitive information. Phishing emails remain a major threat today, however despite increased awareness of the cybercrime, cybercriminals continue to fool…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow Our healthcare data holds a multitude of sensitive information regarding our personal lives. That information could include our full name, date of birth, home address, health history, diagnoses, and test results to name a few pieces of information. While we know the data contained in our healthcare records is quite extensive, less…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow Human-error; we talk about it all the time, but what exactly do we mean? Human-error occurs when an individual performs a task or does something with an unintended outcome. It’s easy to point the finger at employee’s as being an organization’s weakest link, but without appropriate security awareness training provided by the…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow Risky cyber behavior among employees is nothing new, in fact, despite organizations becoming more aware of the state of cybersecurity, employees continue to cause data breaches in unacceptable numbers. TechRepublic looks at a recent OpenVPN survey, which dissects poor cyber hygiene among employees. Despite an increased focus on security training, 25% of…

By Art Gross, President and CEO, HIPAA Secure Now! Twitter: @HIPAASecureNow The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is planning to issue an advance notice of proposed rulemaking this November that could be a major game changer for HIPAA breach settlements. According to the Data Protection Report, the OCR plans to get the public’s input on…