Cybersecurity

A federal district judge has approved a $74 million settlement to resolve a class action lawsuit against Premera Blue Cross for a 2014 data breach, according to the HIPAA Journal.

The Veteran Affairs Office of Inspector General found various issues at Tibor Rubin VA Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif., in terms of policies on patient information privacy.

Two employees at Columbia-based University of Missouri Health Care were targets of a phishing attack that gave an unauthorized third-party access to the email accounts between April 23 and May 1, according to the News Tribune.

Security researchers have discovered 11 vulnerabilities in Wind River's VxWorks operating system, which is used in approximately 2 billion IoT devices, medical devices and control systems, according to the HIPAA Journal.

Louisiana physicians' network Imperial Health has alerted more than 116,000 patients of a ransomware attack that may have compromised their personal information, according to the HIPAA Journal.

Albuquerque, N.M.-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services began mailing letters to 183,000 patients Aug. 2 notifying them of a data breach that may have exposed their personal information, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

Chief information security officers play a crucial role on the hospital's IT team.

Between January and June, more than 31.6 million patient records were compromised, according to data released July 31 from Protenus Breach Barometer.

Long Beach, Calif.-based Tibor Rubin VA Medical Center employees transferred more than 100 patients' private health information via personal and unsecured text messages, email accounts and flash drives between 2013 and 2017, Press-Telegram reports.

Numerous privacy incidents at hospitals, IT suppliers and other healthcare organizations captured public attention last month.