Posts Tagged ‘breach notification’

What Happens To Privacy During Pandemics?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

I am talking to increasing numbers of privacy and information security pros who are concerned about not only getting their pandemic plans in place, but also wanting to know what kinds of privacy issues need to be addressed within the plans.

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Is Encryption Enough to Achieve Privacy?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Of course the answer is no. But there are many reasons! Tune in this afternoon at 4:00pm Pacific time to hear Anyck Turgeon, Scott Draughon and me discuss this topic and talk about encryption laws and the impacts to privacy. Here is the information about the event…

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HITECH Impacts Over 734,178 “Small Business” HIPAA Covered Entities

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 45 CFR Parts 160 and 164: “Breach Notification for Unsecured Protected Health Information; Interim Final Rule” (Breach Notice Rule) has been written about a lot. But much of what is written overlooks some of the very interesting prologue within that document that is very important to consider to frame the context within which the regulation was written…

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HITECH Act Virtual ToC

Friday, September 4th, 2009

This was another very busy week, and I didn’t have a chance to post as much as I would have liked. Part of what kept me busy was an unusually increased amount of email…

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HHS & FTC Breach Notice Rules: First Time NIST Standards Specifically Referenced

Monday, August 31st, 2009

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued their interim final rule for breach notification standards on August 19. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued their final rule of breach notification standards on August 17. The HHS rule covers all healthcare covered entities (CEs) and business associates (BAs). The FTC rule covers all personal health record (PHR) vendors and their service providers…

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Fired Because Photo of Surgery Room Was A “HIPAA Violation”

Friday, August 28th, 2009

I received a very interesting question yesterday, and I wanted to share it and my response here because it is a great HIPAA topic to discuss that I have not seen written about before. I’ve removed the identifying information, and modified the situation details enough so that this cannot be tied to the actual situation…

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8,918 HIPAA Violation Investigations Have Required Corrective Actions

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Here are some important websites to bookmark for you to reference when you need help…beyond what I have on my blog and at my website :)…if you are a US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Covered Entity (CE) or Business Associate (BA)…

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HIPAA/HITECH Breach Notice Rule: Applies To PHI of Deceased Individuals + Training A Key Element

Monday, August 24th, 2009

After a few days unable to make time to post to the blog, or technical difficulties preventing me when I did make time, I’m happy to resume my posting!
Today I want to offer a few thoughts about the breach notice rules that were released last week by the HHS and the FTC in compliance with the HITECH Act requirements…

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You Need These Things When You Get HIPAA Audited!

Friday, August 7th, 2009

I get a bit irritated when I see a vendor touting their “compliance solution” products as making organizations “HIPAA Compliant” or “PCI DSS Compliant” or whatever your regulation of choice happens to be, and then, upon inspection of their products, see that they are just taking something they already had, slapping some marketing language into the description, picking a few of the regulatory requirements that their product may do (fully or partially) and then calling it a “compliance solution.”

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OCR Adding To Staff For Increased HIPAA Compliance Enforcement Activities

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Monday the HHS announced they were moving responsibility for both HIPAA Security Rule and Privacy Rule under the OCR.
That same day they also announced they were expanding the HIPAA “privacy enforcement team.” (Scroll down on this page to see the full verbiage of the announcement.)

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