Health Data Breach Tally s 2021 Surge Continues
Compliance
June 2, 2021
HealthInfoSec) • May 27, 2021 Get Permission
Another big wave of large breaches stemming from hacking incidents, including ransomware attacks, has flooded the federal tally of major health data breaches in recent weeks.
Nearly 100 new breaches have been posted to the Department of Health and Human Services HIPAA Breach Reporting Tool website, which lists health data breaches affecting 500 or more individuals.
As of Thursday, the HHS Office for Civil Rights website showed 251 major breaches had been added to the tally so far this year, affecting a total of nearly 17.3 million individuals. That’s a big jump since April 19, when the tally listed 159 breaches affecting a combined total of 12.5 million individuals (see:
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The Alpine Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism P.C posted a notice for patients about its EMR outage.
Two companies that serve the healthcare sector have reported disruptive cyber incidents affecting their clients, the latest in a string of similar supply chain incidents.
The most recent incidents affected San Antonio-based CaptureRx, which provides healthcare technology and administrative services to hundreds of U.S. hospitals and others, and Dallas-based MedNetworx, which provides hosted medical software, including the Aprima electronic medical records system from CompuGroup eMDs.
Many of the largest health data breaches reported to federal regulators so far this year have involved vendors, including the attack that took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Accellion File Transfer Appliance product.
Hacking Incidents, Vendor Breaches Keep Surging govinfosecurity.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from govinfosecurity.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Supermarket and pharmacy chain Kroger says PHI of 368,000 individuals was exposed in an Accellion hacking incident.
The list of healthcare organizations affected by recent vendor security incidents - including the recent attack against Accellion - continues to grow.
For example, the supermarket and pharmacy chain Kroger reports that more than 368,000 individuals protected health information was affected by the Accellion hacking incident, according to the Department of Health and Human Services HIPAA Breach Reporting Tool website, which lists health data breaches affecting 500 or more individuals.
In a recent statement, Kroger says Accellion notified the company that an unauthorized person gained access to certain Kroger files by exploiting a vulnerability in Accellion’s file transfer service.