Why Healthcare Security Matters

ronjor · Mar 1, 2019

Microsoft Built a Bot to Match Patients to Clinical Trials

By Dina Bass March 1, 2019
A chat bot that began as a hackathon project at Microsoft Corp.'s lab in Israel makes it easier for sick patients to find clinical trials that could provide otherwise unavailable medicines and therapies.
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ronjor · Mar 2, 2019

Hundreds of hospitals punished for lax safety. Here’s how to see if yours is one

Beth Mole - 3/1/2019
Hospital group argues the penalties are misguided and calculated unfairly.
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guest · Mar 2, 2019

Three Rivers Health Subcontractor Reports Data Security Breach
Over 8K Three Rivers Health patients affected
March 1, 2019
http://www.threeriversnews.com/loca...th-subcontractor-reports-data-security-breach

Wolverine Solutions Group, a subcontractor to a vendor Three Rivers Health uses for patient billing services, recently reported a data security incident that will affect over 8,000 Three Rivers Health patients, as well as 700 companies and 1.2 million individuals nationwide.

he data breach did not involve Three Rivers Health’s electronic medical records or other information systems, according to Three Rivers Health CEO Dave Shannon.

“Several months ago Wolverine (Solutions Group) noticed they had someone who infiltrated their system for about five to eight minutes on two different occasions,” Shannon said at press conference Friday.
“They had a forensic audit done that took a long time, and we really just found out about it about two weeks ago. (Wolverine Solutions Group) believes the potential for people being affected is very small.”
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Wolverine Solutions Group: Notice of Breach / Cybersecurity Incident - Updated 02.27.2019

guest · Mar 4, 2019

mood said: ↑

Rutland Regional Medical Center - Notice of Data Security Incident
February 20, 2019
https://www.rrmc.org/about/newsroom/2019/public-notice/
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More than 72,000 possibly affected by hospital data breach
March 2, 2019
https://www.rutlandherald.com/news/...cle_12c80d0c-01d0-59a2-affd-ccc57f2ecfcc.html

An investigation into a data breach that took place at Rutland Regional Medical Center in recent months found that information pertaining to 72,224 patients may have been stolen as well as almost 4,000 Social Security numbers.
“There’s no doubt about it, that’s a very high number. We’re very concerned about that,” Claudio Fort, president and CEO of RRMC, said Friday.

The information on the email accounts contained 3,683 Social Security numbers as well.
Fort said the hackers weren’t able to get into the electronic medical records system. But, he said, some of the employee email accounts had large data files that may have included some basic description of a patient’s diagnosis.
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ronjor · Mar 4, 2019

Mixing medicine and money: Why the rise of health system VCs is raising ethical concerns

by Andrew Dunn | March 4, 2019
Industry-leading nonprofit health systems like Ascension, Providence St. Joseph and Cedars-Sinai have launched affiliated venture capital firms with increasingly more cash to fund start-ups. But the mixture of medicine and financial investment presents the potential for ethical pitfalls.
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shival · Mar 5, 2019

ronjor said: ↑

http://www.securityweek.com/healthcare-security-matters
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Protected health information coupled with our PPI will have a massive impact on society in general as the information contained in these files are not going to change unlike how a hacked password can be so this is going to have an impact on everyone for years to come and be sold multiple times over.

ronjor · Mar 5, 2019

How telemedicine keeps patients in rural communities healthy

By Veronica Combs March 4, 2019
Telemedicine is an effective way to provide healthcare to patients in rural areas. It also offers financial benefits to patients and healthcare providers.
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guest · Mar 5, 2019

Rush University Medical Center data breach, 45,000 patients affected
March 5, 2019
https://www.scmagazine.com/home/sec...l-center-data-breach-45000-patients-affected/

About 45,000 Rush University Medical Center patients had their data exposed when a third-party employee mistakenly exposed a file containing the data to an unauthorized individual.

The Chicago hospital said the data breach most likely happened in May 2018 when a worker at the hospital system’s billing processing vendors disclosed a file containing the patient information to an unauthorized individual, the hospital said in a statement. Names, addresses, birthdays, Social Security numbers and health insurance information were included in the file, but hospital officials do not believe the information has been misused.
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ronjor · Mar 5, 2019

Health Data Hacking Incident Affects 400,000

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee (HealthInfoSec) March 5, 2019
A surgery practice in Washington state has reported a hacking incident that resulted in a breach affecting 400,000 individuals, the largest added to the federal health data breach tally so far in 2019.
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guest · Mar 6, 2019

HAP customers’ personal information may have been affected by data breach
March 6, 2019
https://insurancenewsnet.com/oartic...rmation-may-have-been-affected-by-data-breach

More than 120,000 Health Alliance Plan clients' personal and protected medical information may have been compromised in a security breach, a company spokeswoman told the Free Press on Tuesday.

Letters notifying customers of the breach were sent last week by Wolverine Solutions Group, a Detroit-based company HAP hired to manage its mailing services.
HAP said Tuesday in a statement that the incident may have exposed customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, member identification numbers, health care provider names, patient identification numbers and claim information, such as the service codes and payment amounts.

Wolverine Solutions Group has issued an apology to HAP and our impacted members." [...] A total of 120,344 HAP customers may have been affected, a HAP spokeswoman said
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ronjor · Mar 6, 2019

The Life-Threatening Consequences of Overhyping AI

Arijit Sengupta 03.06.19
On February 11, The New York Times published a story with the headline “AI Shows Promise Assisting Physicians.” While the article focused on a scientific paper showing how an artificial intelligence system could help doctors diagnose certain conditions, it missed a key part of the AI story: Accuracy does not equal impact.
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guest · Mar 6, 2019

Whitefly: Espionage Group has Singapore in Its Sights
March 6, 2019
https://www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/whitefly-espionage-singapore

In July 2018, an attack on Singapore’s largest public health organization, SingHealth, resulted in a reported 1.5 million patient records being stolen. Until now, nothing was known about who was responsible for this attack.
Symantec researchers have discovered that this attack group, which we call Whitefly, has been operating since at least 2017, has targeted organizations based mostly in Singapore across a wide variety of sectors, and is primarily interested in stealing large amounts of sensitive information.

Whitefly compromises its victims using custom malware alongside open-source hacking tools and living off the land tactics, such as malicious PowerShell scripts.
To date, Whitefly has attacked organizations in the healthcare, media, telecommunications, and engineering sectors.

It now appears that the SingHealth breach was not a one-off attack and was instead part of a wider pattern of attacks against organizations in the region.
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ronjor · Mar 6, 2019

Amazon's joint health-care venture finally has a name: Haven

Angelica LaVito Christina Farr Hugh Son 06 Mar 2019
The joint health-care venture between Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway finally has a name. And that's Haven.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett last January announced they were teaming up to tackle rising health-care costs.
They named Dr. Atul Gawande as CEO in June.
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ronjor · Mar 6, 2019

Health records giant Epic temporarily halts additions to its app store because of privacy concerns

Christina Farr | @chrissyfarr 06 March 2019
Epic Systems is the largest medical record software vendor in the United States.
The company has its own equivalent of the Apple App Store, called App Orchard.
The store halted enrollments to third-party health developers in December, citing concerns about the privacy and security of patient data.
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guest · Mar 7, 2019

Sparrow and McLaren patients' data exposed to hackers
March 6, 2019
https://www.wilx.com/content/news/S...tients-data-exposed-to-hackers-506786881.html

Patients at Sparrow and McLaren hospitals are getting letters informing them their personal information may have been exposed to hackers.
The hackers didn't get into either hospital's system. Instead, they attacked a company that handles billing for the hospitals using ransomware to encrypt the data.

Troy Baker, a Manager with Better Business Bureau Communications said hospital and medical facilities are being targeted more because hackers can get data and money.
The letters also say the data breach did not impact either hospital's servers or electronic health record systems. Wolverine hopes to have notified all customers by the end of this month.
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guest · Mar 7, 2019

UltraHack: The Security Risks of Medical IoT
March 7, 2019
https://blog.checkpoint.com/2019/03/07/ultrahack-the-security-risks-of-medical-iot/

Check Point Research recently highlighted the dangers this could pose by getting their hands on an ultrasound machine and investigating what takes place under the hood.
Due to old and well known security gaps in Windows 2000, it was not difficult for our team to exploit one of these vulnerabilities and gain access to the machine’s entire database of patient ultrasound images.

However, it is primarily not mass disruption that motivates cyber criminals to target the healthcare industry. Due to the vast amounts of personal information that hospitals and other healthcare organizations store and transfer electronically, these institutions make for attractive targets to attack.
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ronjor · Mar 8, 2019

Guilty Plea in Rare HIPAA Criminal Case

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee (HealthInfoSec) March 8, 2019
Former Patient Coordinator Wrongfully Disclosed Patient Information
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guest · Mar 8, 2019

Columbia Surgical Specialists pay $15,000 ransom to unlock files
March 8, 2019
https://www.scmagazine.com/home/sec...specialists-pay-15000-ransom-to-unlock-files/

Columbia Surgical Specialists paid an almost $15,000 ransom to regain access to files encrypted during a ransomware attack.

The Spokane, Wash.-area healthcare facility told its patients the news in a letter sent on March 7, claiming the locked files were needed to ensure the health and safety of several patients.
“Yes, we paid $14,649.09. We received notice from the people that encrypted the files just a few hours before several patients were scheduled for surgeries, and they made it clear we would not have access to patient information until we paid a fee. [...]"

Initially it was believed 400,000 patients were affected, but Columbia has since said that figure is overinflated. The health care provider has not issued a new figure.
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guest · Mar 9, 2019

mood said: ↑

Three Rivers Health Subcontractor Reports Data Security Breach
Over 8K Three Rivers Health patients affected
March 1, 2019
http://www.threeriversnews.com/loca...th-subcontractor-reports-data-security-breach
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Emotet trojan implicated in Wolverine Solutions ransomware attack
March 8, 2019
https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/emotet-trojan-implicated-in-wolverine-solutions-ransomware-attack

The notorious Emotet trojan has been linked to a ransomware attack against Wolverine Solutions Group (WSG) that resulted in the personal data of potentially hundreds of thousands of US healthcare patients being compromised.
Detroit-based WSG – which provides IT, printing, and logistics services for health-related business clients – fell victim to a ransomware attack on September 25, 2018.

The Daily Swig asked WSG for further details relating to the ransomware strain that impacted its systems, via Emotet, thus far without any further information.
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guest · Mar 9, 2019

Emerson Hospital reports data breach
March 9, 2019
http://www.lowellsun.com/news/ci_32502247/emerson-hospital-reports-data-breach

Emerson Hospital is offering a two-year membership to an identity protection service to 6,300 patients whose personal information was part of a data breach caused by a third-party vendor last year.
"We sincerely apologize and regret that this situation occurred," the hospital said in a prepared statement. "We are continually working to protect the privacy and security of patient information."
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guest · Mar 10, 2019

Licensed Producer under scrutiny for possible privacy breach of patient info
March 8, 2019
https://www.thegrowthop.com/cannabi...y-for-possible-privacy-breach-of-patient-info

Reports are surfacing that Canadian licensed producer RedeCan is facing a privacy breach after a mass email to patients revealed their personal information to other patients.
Although officials from RedeCan have not commented publicly, an email from the LP to a patient impacted by the breach indicates the company has self-reported the breach to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

[...] registered with RedeCan as a medical user and received an email from the LP on March 5 welcoming him to the RedeCan family – an email that was cc’d to 115 other patients, including visible full names and email addresses.

Once he received the email and noticed the other patients’ names, James immediately emailed the LP to inform them of the breach. But he also took to Reddit, posting screenshots of RedeCan’s correspondence. To see the full Reddit thread – click here.
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ronjor · Mar 11, 2019

How can healthcare organizations remedy their cybersecurity ailments?

Brad Spannbauer, Senior Director of Product Management, eFax Corporate March 11, 2019
Cybersecurity is a constant concern for healthcare organizations, and the previous 12 months have done little to quell anxieties.
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guest · Mar 11, 2019

mood said: ↑

N.W.T. employee dug through planters, trash to find stolen laptop, weeks after privacy training
The employee, a manager within the Health Department, did not routinely delete sensitive data off laptop
February 26, 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/stolen-laptop-nwt-security-details-ottawa-1.5024775
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This is the final story on the stolen laptop files.
N.W.T. government handed out unencrypted laptops, then 1 with public's health data was stolen
Qualifications of some IT staff and managers are questionable, according to source
March 11, 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nwt-stolen-laptop-encryption-it-department-1.5044118

The N.W.T. government's information technology division knew a set of laptops were "very difficult" to encrypt, but still handed it out for government staff to use in 2013, suggest internal documents obtained by CBC News.
"This creates a privacy risk for the [government] and any data held on those devices."
Laptops 'very difficult' to encrypt
In the immediate aftermath of the theft, the Health Department "received a blanket statement" from the technology centre that all laptops are encrypted, according to internal emails.
But a further internal probe found that the government's Helix laptops were, in fact, not encrypted and were handed out to staff without protections.

The Helix laptops, which had a Windows 8 operating system, appear to have been incompatible with the government's encryption software at the time, according to an internal email from the employee responsible for the stolen laptop.
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ronjor · Mar 11, 2019

U.S. Telehealth Startups Offer Cures To Healthcare Challenges

Savannah Dowling March 6, 2019
Sick of that drive to the doctor’s office and the anxiety that comes from waiting in their office as you grumble at the amount of time and cash it took for you to even get there in the first place?
Yeah, you aren’t the only one. Not only have startups emerged to bring healthcare to a digitized level, but investors are seizing on the opportunity.
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guest · Mar 11, 2019

Data breach may have exposed the personal, medical information of 600,000 in Michigan
March 11, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...xposed-personal-medical-information-michigan/

The personal information and medical data of more than 600,000 people in Michigan may have been compromised in a cyberattack, the state’s attorney general said Monday.

Hackers may have accessed the names, addresses, social security numbers and medical information of customers of several Michigan healthcare companies, including Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Health Alliance Plan and McLaren Health Care, Dana Nessel said.
The business that hackers targeted, Wolverine Solutions Group (WSG), a healthcare company that partners with health plans and hospital systems, said that it has begun notifying clients whose information was compromised by the breach.
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