Hospitals and healthcare organizations are usually the first victims of malware attacks. WannaCry ransomware — malicious software that encrypts files until the victim decides to pay the Bitcoin ransom — took advantage of this when it hit several healthcare institutions last month. With more malware expected to target the healthcare industry this year, following HIPAA […]
Prevent ransomware with HIPAA compliance
Kanye West and HIPAA: an unlikely lesson
Two trends have been rising in popularity in tandem: HIPAA compliance audits and social media. Obviously both of these are far too important to be correlated directly, but they do intersect with each other. Social media tends to push people toward oversharing, and that’s definitely something you don’t want when hosting regulated patient data. Celebrity […]
2017 HIPAA forecast: 3 important reminders
Even if notable punishments and fines for HIPAA non-compliance have only been doled out over the last 6 years, data privacy regulations have been around for 14. And with each passing year, these rules evolve in ways that make it near impossible to keep up without an expert on hand. As we kick off 2017, […]
New heights in data compliance penalties
If your organization hosts data regulated by the US government, you’re familiar with the scare tactics used to sell hosting services. But what lurks behind those vague threats of expensive lawsuits and unfair liability burdens? HIPAA is nearly 100 pages long and few providers actually know what it requires. Unfortunately, it took a massive breach […]
Learn from this NFL team’s EMR fumble
News broke recently that the Washington Redskins reported a laptop stolen that contained thousands of medical records for NFL players. The trainer who was responsible for the laptop claims that it did not contain any HIPAA protected data, but the impact remains largely the same. Protected medical information is vulnerable to a host of exposure […]
Healthcare trends you should follow
“We are living in a digital world, and healthcare practices need a URL”. If Madonna could change the lyrics of her 1984 classic to speak to the healthcare industry, she may have sang something like this. A URL is just one facet of the digital strategy that hospitals and private practices alike will need to […]
4 facts about HIPAA and your IT
While HIPPA’s implementation in relation to technology has been problematic to say the least, things have become much clearer over the course of the past year. However, there are still a few areas in which your office might not be compliant. This isn’t necessarily through negligence on your part, but rather simply a lack of […]