Help Me With HIPAA

If you are a regular listener of the podcast, you know how Donna loves to "HIPAA-geek out" over the HIPAA Summit each year.  Things are no different this year as the virtual conference stretched 3 full days and another half day.  Needless to say Donna got TONS of information to share - so much so we won't be able to fit it all in this one podcast.  So, let's get to Part 1 of the HIPAA Summit 2021....

Cyber attacks keep on coming and there is no expectation that they'll ever stop. Attacks are coming from everywhere - vulnerabilities in software applications, insecure IoT devices connected on the internet, email attacks and phishing, etc. Protecting your systems from cyber attacks is not a "one and done," "set it and forget it" project.  It is a critical and continuous business process that ever...

Reports are coming out evaluating cyber threats with stats and details documenting the aftermath of attacks happening in 2020 and the outlook for 2021. Let's just say they are all on brand with what you expect from anything related to 2020. As you can guess, it isn't looking good for 2021 based on where we are right now. We reviewed some of the articles and reports evaluating cyber threats so you...

Isn't it always the little things that make a big difference?  That's true not only in life, but also when it comes to protecting your data and network from attacks. And, it is often the small things that when overlooked can become a big problem.  So, today we are talking about some of the things that you need to be looking for and that can make a big difference in your privacy and security progra...

Supply chain cyber threats are happening so often it seems like they keep showing up in the news daily. The list of cases keeps growing every month. So much is still slowly being learned about the SolarWinds attack it is getting hard to keep up with how far it goes. Now we have water systems and more healthcare breaches trickling in. This week I even saw a case we covered before about exposed PACS...

Supply chain cyber threats are happening so often they keep showing up in the news. The list keeps growing every month. So much is still slowly being learned about the SolarWinds attack it is getting hard to keep up. Now we have water systems and more healthcare breaches trickling in.  It's time for us to talk about what these supply chain attacks mean to the rest of us. More at HelpMeWithHIPAA.co...

Smart cyber habits are part of a new initiative introduced by CISA they have titled Reduce the Risk of Ransomware Awareness Campaign that will be running for a new month now. The campaign includes a lot of great educational information and a toolkit among other things they have planned. Certainly worth us sharing with you guys because you can't have too many chances to find something that will con...

HHS's Office for Civil Rights published their proposed changes to the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The changes include some required to make HIPAA better align with the requirements of 21st Century Cures Act for patient access to their records. There's a few other changes to note, as well. Let's check them out, shall we? More into at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/291

During NCSAM Kardon signed up for the Terranova Phishing Tournament - much to everyone's surprise. Great news is we didn't have anyone clicking on the link. What did they learn in the tournament? More at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/290

The OCR enforcement announcements keep coming. Our reviews of not only the new announcements but news on some of the older ones are the topic for today. Did you know one from 2018 is still being reviewed in the courts while we get new ones already in 2021? More at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/289

Always great to talk cybersecurity insurance coverage with John Miller of Sterling Seacrest Partners. Threats are constantly evolving for all of us. That means cyber liability coverage must also evolve. Have you evaluated what your cyber policy will really cover when you are attacked? There are certainly several areas John brings up for us all to consider in our cybersecurity policies. More info a...

Making annual predictions is always a little bit guessing and a lot of luck by the end of the year. No way any of us could have predicted where we would go throughout the year we just call 2020. Only history will tell us will give us the distance to understand the last 12 months. Who knows where we will go next but what the umm heck. We figured we would do it again. More info at HelpMeWithHIPAA.co...

A new HIPAA safe harbor rule is out there floating around now. A safe harbor is a legal term that refers to laws and regulations that specify that certain actions will be considered not to violate a given rule. It is often used to clarify big standards like HIPAA. Encryption is one of those things under the breach rules. Do you know about HR 7898? More at HelpMeWithHIPAA/286

A hospital President, after being hit by a cyber attack, said "We really did not anticipate the scope or the impact the attack had on our system and how far-reaching it was." This is just the beginning.  Get prepared for more to come. Especially, with the success of the major SolarWinds infiltration. We knew things were getting worse weeks ago when we recorded this one. Where do we see things goin...

What a year it has been! Say what you will but none of us will EVER forget living through 2020. As we have all adjusted throughout the year we appreciate everyone's continued support of our efforts to educate and entertain. As is our custom, our editor, Bojan, gets his annual 15 minutes of fame.  Enjoy his year end Blooper Show edition that gives us a week off and gives him a chance to get back at...

The value of the HICP guides is really beginning to be realized as we approach the 2nd anniversary of it's release. Erik Decker, Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Privacy Officer, University of Chicago Medical Center (and 405d Task Force industry lead and co-chair) was kind enough to join us again to discuss what's coming next for HICP and what he sees in healthcare cybersecurity manage...

Amazon is rolling out a new "feature" called Sidewalk. If you have any Alexa devices or certain Ring devices on a network we say get off the Sidewalk! At least until you figure out how it can be secured. More at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/283

With so much going on this year things that would have been big news are slipping by with little notice. Back in 2016 The 21st Century Cures Act was passed which included a lot of healthcare IT updates to improve patient access to their information. A specific section was all about how to prevent information blocking. What is it, why do you care and when will things happen? That's the topic today....

Each year we take the week off on Thanksgiving and share a replay of an episode we want to share. This year it seemed appropriate to share our original predictions for 2020 that we did just before the world turned upside down with a pandemic. In a few weeks we will evaluate how we did but for now, catch up on how naive we all were just a few months ago.

Just because a story isn't about healthcare or HIPAA doesn't mean they don't offer some important news for folks in healthcare to take note. Marriott and Zoom cybersecurity cases were just in the news. We all need to take note of them and pay close attention to what happened. Oh, and there is a new one in healthcare that does include a vendor. More info at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/281

Every time we think we get ahead of the current news more things happen! More enforcement news, more ransomware specific warnings, more cyber threats to worry about. Let's get to it!  More info at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/280

Tamika Bass joins us today to discuss the importance of effective communication skills. We have spent a lot of time discussing that it is everyone's responsibility to participate in cybersecurity protections. One big issue in making that happen is to have tech teams communicate effectively with non-tech teams. As Tamika says "if there is no understanding then communication didn't happen". More inf...

Hard to believe that we are rolling out our 6th Halloween episode! This year you get to help figure out the costumes at the network office party. Can you guess what all the cyber costumes are saying? More notes at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/278

More HIPAA COVID examples, another OCR action announced and it is the last week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Time to get informed and #BeCyberSmart about connected devices. More info at HelpMeWithHIPAA.com/277

We get to week 3 of #BeCyberSmart NCSAM. We had no idea when we made this plan that OCR would start dropping settlements at the same time. After a pretty quiet year they announced more settlements in September than they ever had in a single month before. Again, we have a lot to review! Reminds me of one of my favorite movie quotes: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in...