Hacking and Theft of Electronics
Hacking and Theft of electronics has been a common issue in today’s society. Even though most electronics have passwords and are protected, hackers have been able to break in to stolen electronics and make it accessible to use. Electronics are stolen for two main reasons, which are to sell, or to obtain important information, which could affect thousands of people, and put them at risk. If the important information contained in the electronic stolen, is a health information its known as a breach. Part of student sample: Click here to ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
In December 30,2015 valley hope association was involved in an incident, where patient’s health information was at risk. Valley hope association provides a treatment service for drug, alcohol and other treatments. An employee had left her work laptop in her car and was stolen. The laptop had 52,076 patient health information, which included their name, address, phone number, social security number, medical record, date of birth, types of treatment received, their financial and insurance information. It wasn’t certain if the laptop was stolen to get that information or not, but still since it was unclear the motive behind it the treatment association had to take the necessary steps to try and protect the patient’s privacy.
The first step the employee took was notifying police officers and the covered entity. The law enforcement alongside with the covered entity investigated on the case and was able to learn that the patient’s health information has not been opened. The entity then disconnected the access of the stolen computer from the other computer networks and changed the password of the computers. They also notified the patients about the incidents and regularly updated the patients on what was going on.
The next step taken was encrypting the computers containing the patient health information. They also implemented a software that would hide the social security numbers of Patients. They also retrained their employees about the importance of the patient’s privacy and the new software that were going to be used. The entity had also notified the HHC about the breach incident and the media as well.
The OCR determined that the entity have followed all the required/ necessary steps to resolve this issue.