The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced in a press release this week that Anthem, Inc. (Anthem), one of the nation’s largest health benefit companies, has agreed to pay $16 million and take substantial corrective action to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules. This settlement … Continue Reading
A presentation at Black Hat recently revealed that the creators of the “SamSam” ransomware have netted over $6M to date, attacking mostly medium-to-large public and private sector organizations. And they’re showing no signs of slowing down. In the most recent SamSam attacks, the attackers concentrated their efforts on brute-force hacking of weak passwords on devices accessible … Continue Reading
Health care providers and suppliers should be wary of the “Orangeworm” threat, an implementation of malware out in the wild that’s gathering information off of compromised medical equipment, especially old systems where file shares and Windows XP are still in use: https://www.zdnet.com/article/mysterious-cyber-worm-targets-medical-systems-found-on-x-ray-machines-and-mri-scanners/ While this group seems to be limiting their actions to reconnaissance and compromising … Continue Reading
The United States Computer Emergency Readiness team (US-CERT) operates within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), protecting America by responding to major incidents, analyzing threats, and exchanging critical cyber security information with trusted partners around the world. You may have already signed up for the popular email alert … Continue Reading
Back in August, the Associated Press ran this article profiling how a North Carolina manufacturer has been attacked twice by cyber criminals looking to install malware and cripple the “just-in-time” nature of their operations so that they’d be willing to pay a ransom to return to production. While this manufacturer avoided paying the ransom so far, … Continue Reading
