Pennsylvania

Subscribe to Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced this week that the Commonwealth will not continue to do business with its contact tracing vendor following a security incident that potentially exposed the personal information of approximately 72,000 residents collected for the Department of Health’s (DoH) contact tracing program.

According to the (DoH), employees of the vendor created documents…

It is being reported by Cointelegraph that ransomware group Netwalker is offering for sale data it exfiltrated from Pennsylvania based Crozer-Keystone Health System after the system declined to pay the requested ransom.

According to the report, Netwalker offered to sell the data through its darknet website for six days and if no one buys it,…

Last week, the Tex-Mex restaurant chain On the Border suffered a data breach that impacted its payment acceptance systems in 27 states. The restaurant says that some credit card information of customers who visited the chain between April and August 2019 may have been compromised. In a press release, On the Border representatives said, “Our…

On October 12, 2018, Pennsylvania approved a new law that imposes criminal penalties on individuals who use drone to spy on others. The law takes effect in 60 days.

Under this law, the state may impose a fine of up to $300 on any individual who uses a drone to invade another person’s privacy or…

On April 13, 2018, the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (Committee) leadership introduced a five-year Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill, FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 (H.R. 4) (the Act). This bipartisan Act focuses on stabilization of the FAA with consistent funding instead of efforts to reform the air traffic control system. The Act…

Walmart recently filed a patent for drones to aid their shoppers inside their stores –that is, a shopper would use a mobile device, provided by the store, to request a drone, and then direct the drone to conduct a price verification of a product or  to guide the customer to a particular product through the…

Women’s Health Care Group of Pennsylvania has notified approximately 300,000 patients that their protected health information has been compromised by a ransomware attack.

Although the ransomware became active on May 16, 2017, an investigation into the attack showed that the intruders had access to the Group’s system since January of 2017. The intruders may have…

A 27-year old resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Jonathan Kolleh, was arrested and spent 14 hours in a holding cell last week for flying his drone in the vicinity of the National Football League (NFL) Draft. Kolleh began using drones for his filmmaking last year after purchasing a DJI drone. While shooting his latest project, “Straight…

Touted as the first OCR settlement with a wireless health services provider, the OCR announced on April 24, 2017, that it has settled alleged HIPAA violations with CardioNet, based in Pennsylvania for $2.5 million.

CardioNet self-reported a data beach in January 2012, stating that an unencrypted laptop of one of its employees was stolen from a vehicle parked outside the employee’s home. (Again? Don’t get us started on why employees STILL have unencrypted laptops in their cars.)

The laptop contained the ePHI of 1,391 individuals who received mobile monitoring and response for cardiac arrhythmias by CardioNet. Since the breach involved more than 500 individuals, the OCR conducted an investigation. It alleges that as a result of the investigation, it found that CardioNet “had an insufficient risk analysis and risk management processes in place” and that the HIPAA Security Rule policies and procedures were in draft form and had not been implemented. Further, according to the OCR, CardioNet “was unable to produce any final policies or procedures regarding the implementation of safeguards for ePHI, including those for mobile devices.”…
Continue Reading OCR Settles First Case With Wireless Provider for $2.5 Million