Practical articles on HIPAA rules, HITRUST certification, enforcement, and healthcare data protection.
Individual RightsDeciding whether to suspend or maintain operations after a healthcare data breach impacts patient care, forensic evidence, and regulatory compliance.
Breach NotificationThe Challenge In September 2026, healthcare organizations reported 42 PHI breaches affecting 1,043,266 individuals to the Department of Health and Human Services. A concerning pattern emerged: electro
Breach NotificationWhen Twin Cities Pain Clinic settled class action litigation following a business email compromise attack in July 2025, the financial toll included a $385,000 cap for cash payments, plus attorneys fee
Breach NotificationYou re two days into a long weekend when the call comes: an employee clicked a link in what looked like a routine email from a trusted vendor. By the time your security team flagged the anomaly, an un
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Breach NotificationTwo SQL injection attacks in one country. Nearly 24 million patient records exposed. The same threat actor claiming credit for both breaches. If your organization runs on third-party medical software,
Breach NotificationThe Problem: Why This Matters Now You ve got a cybersecurity incident. Maybe your SIEM flagged unusual network activity, a vendor called with bad news, or your forensic team just confirmed unauthorize
Breach NotificationYou ve secured your network, trained your staff on phishing, and passed your last Security Rule risk analysis. Then your vendor gets compromised, and you re notifying 28,000 patients anyway. That s wh
Breach NotificationA four-hour window. That s all it took for an unauthorized person to access an employee email account at Integrative Emergency Services and view Protected Health Information (PHI). The company detecte
De-identification & PHI TypesBaylor Genetics reported a cybersecurity incident to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on August 19, 2026, affecting the Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) of 2,810,878 individuals. The cl
De-identification & PHI TypesScope of This Guide This guide focuses on the technical implementation of access controls required by the HIPAA Security Rule (45 CFR §164.308(a)(4) and §164.312(a)(1)). It s designed for security eng
De-identification & PHI TypesContext: Questions from the Security Team Huddle During weekly security reviews, incident post-mortems, and budget planning sessions, IT security leads often face a gap between deployed measures and a
Regulatory FrameworkYou don t need a breach to fail an audit. A poorly structured Incident Response Plan will do it for you. The HIPAA Security Rule requires a documented Incident Response Plan under 45 CFR § 164.308(a)(
Regulatory FrameworkQuestions IT security teams ask about HIPAA-compliant cloud backup IT security leads often find themselves tasked with finding a backup solution, only to realize that HIPAA-compliant doesn t mean what
Administrative SafeguardsYou re 45 minutes into a ransomware event. Your EHR is locked. Clinical staff are asking whether to activate downtime procedures. Your MSP is on the phone. Your CFO wants to know if you should pay. An
Breach NotificationPurpose of the Checklist Your team just brought systems back online after a security incident. Business units are celebrating, and the board wants an all clear statement. Your CEO is asking if you can
Administrative SafeguardsThe Change Healthcare breach exposed the data of 190 million people after hackers exploited a remote access portal that lacked multifactor authentication. The attack didn t hit a hospital, it hit a th
OCR Enforcement & PenaltiesWhy these mistakes keep happening Your team conducts a thorough risk analysis, documents every vulnerability, and files the report. You think you re done. Then OCR asks: What did you do about the risk
Breach NotificationWhen Tift Regional Health System notified 180,142 patients about a data breach in August 2023, the attack had happened nearly a year earlier. That delay became a core allegation in the class action la
