NEWS & UPDATES

According to a new study led by a researcher at a U.S. business school, large teaching hospitals are more susceptible to data breaches.

The study, led by John Hopkins Carey Business School, unsurprisingly found that 30 of the hospitals in the study had experienced data breaches at least twice since 2009. The study published in the Jama Internal Medicine Journal found that in at least one of those healthcare institutions, over four million patients’ data was compromised.
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Although data breaches have been rife for decades, the number of incidents in the U.S. increased by 40% from 2015 to 2016, according to Bloomberg Technology. This figure may be reflective of U.K. trends as well.

Eva Casey Velasquez, Chief Executive Officer of the Identity Theft Resource Centre, highlighted the crux of data breaches:

“…we are extremely confident that breaches are undiscovered and under-reported, and we don’t know the full scope.”

However, she goes onto say that it isn’t the worst-case scenario they’re looking at; it’s the best-case.
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A children’s paediatric health centre has been hacked with a wealth of personal data exposed.

Unusually, the hackers created multiple unknown user IDs to access information and no ransom was actually demanded. That being said, healthcare data can be very valuable in itself, so locking an organisation out their own systems to then mine the data is still a crime that may pay dividends to attackers.
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The healthcare industry has suffered massive breaches in both the U.K. and the U.S.; and it’s a growing problem.

Data breaches are happening all the time both here and across the pond in the U.S. In this story (which is based on figures from the U.S. but can be reflective of the U.K. too) the Breach Barometer found that nearly 1.5 million patient records were leaked in March of 2017.

The number of incidents in March reportedly rose by 2.5 times in comparison to January and February combined, with the largest incident involving nearly 700,000 patient records.
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The Information Commissioner’s Office has issued a £400,000 fine to Keurboom Communications Limited for harassing millions of people with unwanted nuisance calls.

The fine is reportedly the largest ever issued for nuisance calls. The fine brings the investigation to a close after thousands of complaints were received about the company’s nuisance calls.
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