473,807 Patient Records Compromised in January, 2018—83 Percent Caused by Hacking Incidents

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The recently released Protenus Healthcare Breach Barometer report notes that in January, 2018, at least 473,807 patient records were compromised in 37 breaches reported to the Office for Civil Rights. Twelve of the reported breaches were attributable to insiders, which was 32 percent of the data breaches reported in January. Seven of those incidents were caused by insider error and five were caused by wrongdoing. This shows how important employee education and monitoring continues to be in detecting and mitigating breaches caused by employees.

Eleven of the breaches reported in January were caused by hacking incidents, which was approximately one-third of the breaches reported in January. However, although these incidents accounted for one third of all of the reported incidents, these hacking incidents accounted for 83 percent of the records compromised, which means they were much bigger than the others. The total number of records in January exposed by hacking incidents totaled 393, 766 records.

Just one of the hacking incidents exposed 279,865 records-which illustrates how many records can be compromised by an intruder. Further, 11 of the incidents in January were caused by malware and ransomware attacks, which continue to be problematic in the health care industry

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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