Privacy and cybersecurity is at the forefront of everyone’s mind these days and, in 2018, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) settled ten cases and prevailed in another before an Administrative Law Judge to the tune of $28,700,000. This is a new record for OCR, besting 2016 by over $5,000,000. The latest settlement clocked in at $3,000,000, owed by a health system in California that experienced two breaches of electronic protected health information (“ePHI”), which affected 62,500 individuals.  The first breach involved a security configuration where persons could access files with ePHI without a username or password, thereby making ePHI available to anyone with access to the health system’s server.  The second breach involved a server misconfiguration, exposing the health system’s ePHI over the internet, including social security numbers and treatment information.
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