Electronic Health Record (EHR) services provider QRS Inc. is facing a data breach lawsuit following an August cyberattack that may have compromised the privacy of 319,778 patients. Background of QRS Data Breach Lawsuit In a statement on their website, QRS confirmed their discovery on August 26, 2021, that a threat actor had accessed a server and may have obtained electronic protected health [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court today (January 13, 2022) issued a stay of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standard that would have forced all private employers in the country with more than 100 workers to require COVID-19 vaccinations or masks and weekly testing for unvaccinated staff. The Supreme Court’s ruling effectively blocks all federal enforcement of the OSHA ETS. [...]
The Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL) filed new rules on January 7, 2022, to formally adopt the federal agency's OSHA Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS). Details of Illinois OSHA Emergency Temporary Standards While the rules were effective immediately, Illinois employers with more than 100 employees have until January 24, 2022, to begin complying with the requirements of the OSHA ETS, which include developing [...]
The second round of revisions to the Cal OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) will begin to be enforced on January 14, 2022. First enacted in November 2020, the Cal OSHA ETS regulations were designed to address the threat of COVID-19 in the workplace. What’s Unchanged with the Cal OSHA ETS Revision? Some things have not changed with the update. The Cal OSHA [...]
Nearly Half of Healthcare Orgs Have No HIPAA Incident Response Plan for Cyberattacks Despite the growing threat of cyberattacks such as phishing, hacking, and ransomware, 42 percent of surveyed healthcare organizations haven’t implemented a HIPAA incident response plan to address these vulnerabilities. Failure to implement an incident response plan is a clear violation based upon HIPAA’s security rule. [...]
FlexBooker is an online appointment scheduling platform that services small businesses across several industries, including the healthcare industry. On December 23, 2021, FlexBooker disclosed that it had suffered a breach that resulted in the theft of sensitive data, some of which has been posted to the dark web. According to reports from Have I Been Pwned, the FlexBooker breach has affected 3,756,794 users thus far. [...]
An October 2021 cyberattack on Broward Health resulted in the extraction of up to 1.3 million pieces of protected health information (PHI) from the system’s computer network during the hospital data breach. What Occurred in the Broward Hospital Data Breach Broward Health is a public non-profit hospital system composed of four hospitals in the greater Ft. Lauderdale, Flordia area. According to a [...]
Healthcare information management company Ciox announced they have begun notifying business associates following an employee email breach of protected health information (PHI) affecting the patients of at least 32 healthcare providers nationwide. What We Know About the Ciox Vendor Email Breach In a post on their website, the Alpharetta, Georgia-based company admitted that an unauthorized person accessed one Ciox employee’s email account [...]
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of the OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard on January 13, 2022. The ruling effectively blocks federal enforcement of the OSHA ETS. The order does not affect enforcement by state agencies who chose to adopt the federal standards in their states. Barring a stay from the U.S Supreme Court the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will [...]
The holiday season is generally slow for most businesses, but that’s not the case for the hacking industry. Hackers unusually ramp up their efforts during the holidays as more people are shopping online. With this, there is an increase in exploitations through phishing attempts, such as when an email seemingly contains a tracking link that is really a malicious link. This contributed to the thirty-five large-scale December 2021 [...]
Upcoming Webinar: Lessons from 2021's HIPAA breaches & fines
