Attached is an updated summary of the major provisions of each state law that have enacted security breach statutes. In the event of a security breach, you should consult legal counsel to ascertain the appropriate method of notification and other requirements. To date — forty-five states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have enacted legislation requiring notification of security breaches involving personal information. States with no security breach laws include: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Arkansas, California, Minnesota, and Texas now include health information within the scope of their respective security breach statutes by including health information within the definition of personal information. Eight states take an acquisition based approach when defining whether notice should be given, while the remaining states take a more pragmatic risk assessment of the likelihood of harm as controlling whether notice should be sent to consumers. [...]
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September 15th, 2009 | Tags: choicepoint security breach, hipaa breach notification, information security breach and notification act, security breach disclosure, Security Breach Notification, security breach notification laws | Category: Privacy Law, State Privacy and Computer Security Laws, State Security Breach Laws |
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 Print This PostIt is important to be aware of whether your insurance policy covers security incidents, especially, where insurance is a component of your risk management controls. A recent example illustrates this potential issue. * Perpetual Storage (http://www.perpetualstorage.com/index_home.htm) an off-site storage facility, allegedly lost, by the action or inaction of one of its’ drivers, backup tapes belonging to the University of Utah, when the tapes were stolen from an employee’s car. June 12th, 2010 | Tags: breach, HIPAA, insurance, security, utah | Category: Damages, HIPAA Privacy, HIPAA Security, Identity Theft, Privacy |
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Print This PostOn March 19th, HHS published a notice in the Federal Register that HHS intends to complete approximately 2500 surveys to assess public perception of Health Information Exchanges.[i] Public perception of the security of HIE’s is key to understanding how ONC will eventually regulate HIEs. On a macro level the National Health Information Network (NHIN) is a network of HIEs. At this time most states have received grants to implement an HIE. Recently, however, HHS has also announced a scaled down version of the Connect software to be used for limited transaction between providers. Generally, NHIN Connect software framework is designed to enable secure and interoperable electronic health information exchanges (HIE) with NHIN compliant organizations, including federal agencies, local-level health organizations, and healthcare participants in the private sector. However, the NHIN Direct initiative announced in January, 2010 may replace some HIEs that do not bring value added services to the market [...] March 25th, 2010 | Tags: authorization, Connect Framework, consumer consent, DURSAm data sharing agreement, HIE, medical records, NHIN, NHIN Direct | Category: CCHIT, EMR, Federal Agencies, HIPAA Privacy, HIPAA Security, Health Information Exchange, Health Information Technology, Health and Humans Services (HHS), Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology |
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Print This PostOn March 22nd http://www.healthreform.gov, an official U.S. Government Web site managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, announced “The passage of health insurance reform legislation represents a historic victory for the American people. America’s families and businesses will not only get relief from skyrocketing health care costs but will now have more control over their health care. No longer will the insurance companies get the final say when it comes to rates and rights. ” The Reconciliation Bill, ‘‘Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation http://docs.house.gov/rules/hr4872/111_hr4872_amndsub.pdf. This Bill was agreed to by both the Senate and House and will be signed into law by the President this week.[i] I am, probably like most Americans a little worried/ curious how things will evolved form here. Last winter when my wife had to wait in line for six hours at the Virginia Department of Public Health on two separate occasions, for our twin daughters 14 months old to receive their H1N1 vaccination, causes me to wonder what exactly health reform will mean for the quality and efficient health care. There are hidden costs of waiting in line for health care, these costs may be more then some of the more sick can endure. Health care is partly a supply and demand problem — with something like universal health care some thought should be given to where and how we can train many new caregivers at a reasonable cost. Forty-five thousand dollars per year for a physician (4 years), or for a physician assistant (2 years) is a large sum of [...] March 23rd, 2010 | Tags: Constitutional, Health Care, Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act, healthreform.gov, hr872, Obamacare, Reconciliation Bill, supply and demand, Supreme Court | Category: Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act, Health Reform, Health and Humans Services (HHS) |
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Print This PostConfiguration management remains a challenging issue especially for small and mid-size organizations. With the complex dependencies of modern applications a modification to an organization browser, a security patch of the operating system, and even hard-ware upgrades can introduce incompatibilities or security vulnerabilities into your organization’s information system. Today NIST announced the publication of Initial Public Draft Special Publication 800-128, Guide for Security Configuration Management of Information Systems. This publication provides guidelines for managing the configuration of information system architectures and associated components for secure processing, storing, and transmitting of information. Security configuration management is an important function for establishing and maintaining secure information system configurations, and provides important support for managing organizational risks in information systems. This publication beyond providing an excellent resource includes two invaluable [...] March 19th, 2010 | Tags: Configuration Management, NIST, SP 800-128 | Category: Computer Security Law -- Federal, Data Hemorrages, Destruction, Encryption, FIPS 140-2, HIPAA Security, NIST, Uncategorized |
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Print This PostOne of the most common (and high risk) user installed software found on the enterprise desktop computer is P2P[i] file-sharing software. This software can be detected with networking scanning software like Nessus.[ii] Unlike, other software, P2P file-sharing software is very effective at circumventing an organization’s security perimeter. In most organizations measures in-place to prevent users from installing software are easily circumvented: (1) by installing and running the device from a USB key, (2) using the local Administrator account to install the software because the local Administrator account has not been set after the last re-image or the local administrator account password is known to users, or (3) IT installs the software at the request of a user. Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS “)has been very proactive in getting the message out that portable media, laptops, and other similar devices that contain electronic protected health information (e-PHI) must be encrypted. However, despite numerous alleged disclosures of e-PHI on P2P networks, HHS is failing to inform patients, covered entities, and business associates of covered entities about the risks of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and the inadvertent sharing of documents containing [...] March 16th, 2010 | Tags: Bittorent, e-donkey, FTC, GLB, Gnutella, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, limewire, p2p, Section 5 of the FTC Act, unfair methods of competition | Category: "Expectation of Privacy", Data Hemorrages, FTC Security Breach Notification, Federal Agencies, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, HIPAA Privacy, HIPAA Security, Health and Humans Services (HHS), Peer-2-Peer File Sharing, Privacy, Section 5 of the FTC Act |
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Print This PostHIMSS is the largest health care technology conference in the United States. This year the conference was held in Atlanta, the conference brought $25 million to Atlanta. The tone of HIMSS 2010 was cautiously optimistic in light of the uncertainty surrounding threatened Governments legislative actions. Vendors are working hard to meet recently promulgated regulatory requirements for EHR systems; some of legislated requirements for EHRs are not essential or likely to be used by most physicians. The government is positioned as the primary funding source for EHR and HIE technology. Grants for HIE implementation total almost 400 million dollars, with a promise of more grants to come. Implementation models for state HIE’s vary from a federated model to states with loosely associated local HIE’s. Thus far a strong centralized structure seems to be the most effective implementation [...] March 12th, 2010 | Tags: Google Health, Health Vault, HIMSS, HIMSS 2010, Interoperability, ownership, patients, proprietary formats, rights | Category: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, HIMSS, HIPAA Security, HL-7, Health Information Technology, Health Reform, Health and Humans Services (HHS), Interoperability, NIST |
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Print This PostUnder the HITECH breach notification requirements, covered entities must notify HHS of all reportable breaches. HHS recently released a list of breaches, including the covered entity, the business associate, number of individuals affected, and the location of the information lost. More than 35 HIPAA covered entities have reported breaches involving more than 500 individuals’ PHI since September 2009. The theft/loss of laptops, desktop and portable media by far represent the majority of the security breaches reported thus far. A summary of breaches reported thus far appears [...] March 1st, 2010 | Tags: Department of Health and Human Services, Freedom of Information Act, health information, HIPAA, HITECH Act, security breach | Category: HITECH Act, Health Information Technology, Health Reform, Health and Humans Services (HHS), Office of Civil Rights, unsecured protected health information |
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Print This PostOn February 25, 2009, at a Health Information Technology Policy Committee Adoption/Certification Workgroup meeting, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, Director of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological highlighted concerns with the current state of regulation around Health Information Systems which are not currently actively regulated by FDA. Dr. Shuren’s testimony highlighted three areas of concern: (1) the FDA’s legal and regulatory authorities over medical devices and the approach we have taken with respect to HIT to date; (2) a Review of various safety issues that have been reported to the FDA and other unique challenges presented by HIT; and (3) Possible approaches the FDA could take in the future to help address these [...] March 1st, 2010 | Tags: 510k, avaliability, confidentiality, Dynamic Testing, Electronic Health Records, FDA, HIT, integrity, MDDS, ONC, Policy Committee, requirements specificastion, Shuren, Validation | Category: Center for Devices and Radiological, FDA, Health Information Technology, MDDS, Medical Device Data System |
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Print This PostLargely in reaction to a devastating cyber attack against Google last week, and general concern about the vulnerability of the nations information superhighway, the house passes the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009 (available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:h4061) 422 to 5. The companion bill in the senate is Cybersecurity Act of 2009, or Senate Bill 773, will “ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cyber security defenses against disruption, and for other purposes.” The senate bill is much broader in scope (calling for example a cybersecurity [...] February 5th, 2010 | Tags: Cybersecurity Act of 2009, Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009 . HR4061, SB773 | Category: Computer Security Law -- Federal, Cyber Security Enhancement Act of 2009, Expert Systems, Law and Technology, NIST |
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ONC 2nd Annoucement for HIE Grants and a Review of Program Requirements
On March 15, 2010, ONC completed the announcement of State Health Information (State HIE) Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program awardees. The first announcement of awards were on February 12th, 2010. These awards are meant as seed money for State HIE’s which are expected to reach financial independent within 2 to 4 years. The Awardees will be evaluated on various criteria over a four year period. The criteria are detailed in http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_10741_888442_0_0_18/FOA_State%20Health%20Information%20Exchange%20Cooperative%20Agreement%20Program_Sept3_updated%20funding%20formula.doc. A PDF of this same document is available here: FOA_State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program_Sept3_updated funding formula. Generally, HIEs are intended to transmit healthcare information electronically across organizations within a region, community or hospital system. HIE generally allow for the movement of clinical information among disparate health systems. Various gateways and interface utilities are used to translate data from disparate information [...]