I have been discussing the inevitability that government fines for egregious data breaches will eventually reach small medical practices for some time now. In early January my prediction became a reality when the Office of Civil Rights administered a fine for $50,000 for the loss of an un-encrypted laptop by a small hospice facility in Northern Idaho. Their fine for the theft of a laptop with 441 un-encrypted patient medical records sends a clear signal from the Department Of Health & Human Services that even small medical organizations are not exempt from fines for lax security and protection of confidential consumer information. If you need more convincing - spend a few minutes browsing the Office of Civil Rights website and you will find other case examples by type of medical facility.

Recently, the Cyber Liability Blog, Junto, Listed the top five reasons businesses don’t purchase cyber liability insurance. In case you are one of the many hold outs that haven’t purchased cyber insurance yet - here are my answers to the reasons you procrastinators try to present for failing to purchase.

Remember when a cell phone was just a phone? Now days we can surf the web, order Chinese food, check our bank balances, pay bills or do just about anything that you can do with a personal computer. Unfortunately, now the stakes are much higher if your device becomes lost or is stolen. Don’t fall victim to hackers looking to pick your pocket or worse yet your bank account! They truly don’t have to even touch you any longer. If a new smart phone is on your wish list for this Holiday Season, here are 10-Holiday pointers that you can use to make your device more secure from the eyes of would be hackers and cyber crooks:

On November 9, 2012 Governor Snyder cut the ribbon on a new training facility called the Michigan Cyber Range which according to their press release is designed to train cyber security professionals for the detection and prevention of cyber attacks in a real-world setting. Set up by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a national defense test bed for critical security research and run by Merit Network in Ann Arbor, Michigan’s version of the 1983 movie “War Games” is alive and well - but without the outcome of the world hanging in the balance!

How likely is my business to have a data breach? What is a data breach going to cost me?

Ignorance is NOT Bliss! By Stew Nelson

Confused about finding the correct Cyber policy? Join the crowd!
by Stew Nelson

Effective September 2012 if you “do business in Texas” - whatever that means - and you have a data breach involving personal information, PI, and fail to notify the affected individuals “as quickly as possible” you are open for a $100/day/Individual fine up to $250,000! The infraction is a misdemeanor unless the information is Personal Health Information, PHI, and then the offense can be a felony! Yikes! H.B No 300, adds some serious teeth to their mandatory notification disclosure law.

That was the news my oldest son received last week from Zappo’s. Seems my son’s largess at Christmas time included buying my youngest son a pair of shoes from the online retailer, owned by Amazon, Zappos. Needless to say my son was shocked and a bit put off by the need to change his passwords for numerous websites scattered around cyberspace. The good news was the hackers did not get complete credit card numbers, but they did get enough information including email addresses and encrypted passwords for 24 million people. With some simple effort it would not be inconceivable that the hackers could do some real damage by taking control of thousands of email accounts and by using the information obtained to perpetrate some sophisticated phishing attacks.

This is a long article so I am just posting the intro paragraph and the summary. If you would like to read the full article follow the link.