Illinois hospital's data held for ransom
In a twist on the traditional healthcare data breach, an anonymous party accessed the protected health information (PHI) of a critical access hospital in southern Illinois and threatened to release more data unless a "substantial" ransom payment was made.
The 22-bed Clay County Hospital in Flora, Ill., notified its clinic patients about the anonymous email containing patient PHI on Nov. 2. The sender threatened to make the confidential information public unless they received a "substantial payment," hospital officials explained in a Dec. 15 notification letter to affected patients.
Clay County Hospital officials immediately notified law enforcement, according to the notice. The compromised data included patients names, addresses, Social Security numbers and dates of birth. An investigation by external forensic experts found that hospital servers had not been hacked and remain secure.
The hospital is implementing "extra internal security measures," according to the notice. "These include additional logging systems and auditing features to track and control data access."
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.