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HIPAA Laptop Encryption Used In Stolen South Carolina Dept. Of Mental Health Computer.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a story where a laptop stolen from a car turns out to be protected according to HIPAA standards.  Well, there’s always a first time for everything: according to thestate.com, laptop encryption was used on a stolen computer that belonged to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.  And […] read more

HIPAA Encryption: Cedars-Sinai Breach Bigger Than Believed Earlier.

The LA Times writes that a data breach at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is larger than previously reported.  According to latimes.com, a stolen computer that was not protected with medical laptop encryption software contained information on more than 33,000 patients; in August, the number was “more than 500” which implied a figure closer to 500 than […] read more

Data Encryption: Arson For Covering Up Data Breach, Data Was Objective.

Generally, when an entity experiences a data breach (say, a laptop theft), it concludes the thieves were not after the data on the device, proclaiming with alacrity that they suspect the hardware was the objective of the theft, that the laptop will be wiped and resold, that clients’ data are probably safe – an assumption […] read more

Managed Encryption: Retirement Community Suffers HIPAA Data Breach.

According to csoonline.com, Watermark Retirement Communities announced a HIPAA data breach just prior to the three-day weekend.  The cause of the breach?  A laptop computer that was stolen from an employee’s car.  Of course, this wouldn’t really be an issue if the computer’s data had been properly protected, such as with managed HIPAA encryption software […] read more

Disk Encryption In Education: Milford (MA) School Students Embroiled Data Breach.

According to milforddailynews.com, 3000 students who receive Medicaid reimbursements had their personal information compromised.  The data breach occurred when a laptop belonging to Multi-State Billing Services was stolen from an employee’s vehicle.  The use of full disk encryption would have prevented the data breach; furthermore, seeing how this took place in Massachusetts – and involved […] read more

HIPAA Encryption: How Can You Tell Password-Protection Was Used Instead of Encryption?.

While I don’t mean to pick on Colorado Neurodiagnostics, a Colorado company that recently experienced a patient data breach, the short article announcing the loss of their computer with medical data illustrates how one can conclude that HIPAA laptop encryption was not used. Colorado Neurodiagnostics PHI Breach According to denverpost.com, a Colorado Neurodiagnostics laptop containing […] read more

HIPAA Encryption Report: HHS/OCR Releases 2011/2012 Annual Report on PHI Breaches.

The US Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights has released their annual report on data breaches involving protected health information.  The report covers the dates of January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2012, according to phiprivacy.net.  While it may reflect the near past, it shows why HIPAA encryption is so important: […] read more

Desktop Encryption: LA County Encrypts All Workstations, Will Require The Same From Contracted Agencies.

It escaped my notice, so I’m opining on this three weeks late – to be honest, a quick search seems to indicate that almost no one covered this particular development – but Los Angeles County has moved to up their data security by pursuing workstation encryption, as seen in this motion.  All I can say […] read more

Full Disk Encryption: TrueCrypt Shuts Down, Conspiracy Theories Pop Up.

TrueCrypt, the venerable open source encryption software that turned 10-years-old earlier this year has shut down, and it looks like it may be for good.  What’s known so far is this: On May 28, 2014, TrueCrypt’s (TC) website said it was shutting down operations. TC also noted that their software “may contain unfixed security issues”. […] read more

Email Encryption: Doing It The Right Way (And The Wrong Way).

More and more data is moving to the cloud.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that online hacking is currently the top reason for data breaches (depending on which metric you’re using), followed quite closely by yesteryear’s number one contender – the loss of laptops and other data storage devices that weren’t safeguarded with […] read more