Knopp Resigns as Wyoming CIO After Major Health Data Leak
As Wyoming continues to assess the damages involved in a high-profile health data leak, CIO Gordon Knopp has quit his position. State Information Services Administrator Timothy Sheehan is Knopp s current replacement.
May 19, 2021 •
Gordon Knopp is no longer CIO of Wyoming, according to an announcement yesterday from Gov. Mark Gordon.
Knopp, along with Health Director Michael Ceballos, resigned from their positions following a high-profile leak of sensitive health-care data. The leak impacted more than one-quarter of Wyoming s population.
According to the Associated Press, Knopp couldn t be reached for comment on the reason for his resignation, and the governor s spokesperson declined to comment on the personnel changes.
A one-two punch of health department-related data breaches over the past month have exposed hundreds of thousands of patient records in Pennsylvania and Wyoming.
In Wyoming, COVID-19, influenza and blood alcohol test results for more than 164,000 people – more than a quarter of the state s population – were accidentally uploaded to a public-facing website this past week.
And in Pennsylvania, a data breach potentially compromised the information of about 72,000 residents involved in the state s COVID-19 contact-tracing program. As of Monday, the state had not yet notified the impacted individuals.
WHY IT MATTERS
The exposures were related to employee behavior in both cases.
Phone Scammers Using Wyoming Information Breach as Advantage May 4, 2021
Telephone scammers are trying to take advantage of an accidental Wyoming Department of Health data release affecting over a quarter of the state’s population, department officials said.
Scammers request insurance, Medicare, Medicaid or other financial information and in some cases look like they’re calling from state government numbers, department administrator Jeri Hendricks said in a statement.
“No one representing the department will ask you for insurance, Medicare, Medicaid or personal financial information. No one representing the department will call you about the breach unless they are returning a call you made to us first,” Hendricks said.
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The Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) is warning residents about fraudulent calls from people falsely claiming to represent the department in connection to a recently announced WDH health information breach.
WDH recently described a mistaken exposure of laboratory test result data involving more than 164,000 Wyoming residents and others including hundreds from Colorado.
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The incident involved COVID-19 and influenza test result data and breath alcohol test result files mistakenly uploaded by an employee to private and public online storage locations on servers belonging to GitHub.com.
Jeri Hendricks, Office of Privacy, Security and Contracts administrator with WDH, said the department is hearing reports of Wyoming residents receiving fraudulent calls from people claiming to represent the department in connection with the breach.