Burgessct - Credit Card Fraud

My credit card and the Washington Secretary of State site used in credit card fraud

It was 0730 in the morning and my wife, Kathy, calls down from her office and asks what the $200 charge was on her credit card to the Washington Secretary of State. She had seen the charge come through on 09 November for a billing on 08 November. I told her I would check, but that it might be an …

Burgessct - Mystery Shopper

Mystery Shopper scam nets millions

So you wanna be a mystery shopper? Meet, Timeiki Hedspeth, age 39, from Houston, Texas. She may have reached out to you, via email, to recruit you to be a part of her “Mystery Shopper” team. She recruited throughout the United States. What fun you might think, especially given how little one has to do, to earn a little pin …

Data Breaches again at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield New Jersey (Horizon BCBSNJ)

It seems health insurer Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield New Jersey (Horizon BCBSNJ) can’t catch a break. During the course of 2015 (1100) and 2016 (170,000), they have had two more incidents which compromised or placed at risk the protected health information or the personal identifying information of their insured. In December 2013, we commented on how Horizon had suffered …

Patient Data: The Crown Jewels (Mayo Blog)

I have always been an advocate of protecting one’s personal information and privacy and was personally pleased when the HIPAA standards came into being, as this raised the tide for all medical care providers to a common level of information protection. Indeed doctors, dentists, insurers, health organizations, hospitals and clinics all moved to have their data handling and storage reviewed and certified as being HIPAA compliant.

Sadly, being compliant is not synonymous with being secure. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse there have been more than 87 separate data breaches made public from January 1 – June 10, 2011, which in aggregate affected more than 5,000,000 individuals’ records. Let’s look at the variety of ways patient data were compromised and how every one of these losses was avoidable.