Cybersecurity news for hospitals and health systems

In response to recent large-scale data breaches and cyberattacks in the healthcare industry, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., sent a letter to various healthcare associations asking them to describe their current cybersecurity efforts and what improvements need to be made, according…

Seattle-based UW Medicine sent letters to 974,000 patients notifying them of a Dec. 4, 2018, data error that allowed patient information to come up in internet searches.

Netskope, a cloud security provider, now provides continuous security assessment and monitoring capabilities for Google Cloud customers.

Healthcare data protection company Protenus revealed there were 222 hacking incidents in 2018, up nearly 25 percent from 2017. Of these data breaches, more than 11 million patient records were affected, CBS News reports.

Memorial Hospital at Gulfport (Miss.) sent letters to roughly 30,000 patients Feb. 15 notifying them of a data breach, according to the HIPAA journal.

Facebook allegedly released protected and sensitive health information of members in different private and public groups, according to a Federal Trade Commission complaint.

Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center inadvertently exposed the names of 908 patients in a paper mailing announcing the retirement of a certified nurse practitioner at its Epilepsy Center.

Piles of patient records were found burning in a dumpster across the street from Atlanta-based Southside Medical Center, according to WSBTV.

Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Rocky Mountain Health Care Services sent letters to 971 patients alerting them of a recent data breach.

The National Institutes of Health should strengthen the information-security controls it has in place for sharing access to sensitive data, according to a report from the HHS' Office of Inspector General.