Local Encryption ... Why Not?
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@scottalanmiller said:
I don't see any allowance for that. The breach happened. I think that you are not considering the breach to have happened. By the time that the laptop was lost, we are past the point of the breach and the need to report it. Sure, they might get away with it given the situation, but they are skirting the law and getting away with a breach, not avoiding a breach.
Not every breach needs to be reported. That is what legal and compliance teams are for.
For example, the SED. If you lose a laptop that in encrypted to their standards, it is exempt from reporting requirements.
“Covered entities and business associates that implement the specified technologies and methodologies with respect to protected health information are not required to provide notifications in the event of a breach of such information–that is, the information is not considered ‘unsecured’ in such cases. ” [78 Federal Register 5639] Finally, “[w]e encourage covered entities and business associates to take advantage of the safe harbor provision of the breach notification rule by encrypting limited data sets and other protected health information pursuant to the Guidance. If protected health information is encrypted pursuant to this guidance, then no breach notification is required following an impermissible use or disclosure of the information.”
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@scottalanmiller said:
Why? The issue is the theft, not the security.
Because it is a breach and breaches over 500 records need to be reported, or at least investigated to be reported.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I don't see any allowance for that. The breach happened. I think that you are not considering the breach to have happened. By the time that the laptop was lost, we are past the point of the breach and the need to report it. Sure, they might get away with it given the situation, but they are skirting the law and getting away with a breach, not avoiding a breach.
Not every breach needs to be reported. That is what legal and compliance teams are for.
For example, the SED. If you lose a laptop that in encrypted to their standards, it is exempt from reporting requirements.
“Covered entities and business associates that implement the specified technologies and methodologies with respect to protected health information are not required to provide notifications in the event of a breach of such information–that is, the information is not considered ‘unsecured’ in such cases. ” [78 Federal Register 5639] Finally, “[w]e encourage covered entities and business associates to take advantage of the safe harbor provision of the breach notification rule by encrypting limited data sets and other protected health information pursuant to the Guidance. If protected health information is encrypted pursuant to this guidance, then no breach notification is required following an impermissible use or disclosure of the information.”
I don't agree. If someone has downloaded without permission to the laptop, encryption or not, the data is stolen and out of the hospital's control. You are talking about cases where the data was allowed to be there, we are talking about where "there" is the transfer point of an ongoing theft.
HIPAA might protect you in the case of this and help with a cover up - but your facility is still going to get destroyed by the media if that data gets released and no one will care that the laptop was "encrypted", only that you allowed data to leave the facility.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Why? The issue is the theft, not the security.
Because it is a breach and breaches over 500 records need to be reported, or at least investigated to be reported.
Yes, but the theft was not related to your security. What's there to investigate? Has nothing to do with IT.
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I don't think the breaches comes from doctor and nurses. If you look at the data, it seems to me to be the behind the scenes people.
Look at his. Puch.
Under a settlement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Affinity Health Plan, Inc. will settle potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules for $1,215,780. OCR’s investigation indicated that Affinity impermissibly disclosed the protected health information of up to 344,579 individuals when it returned multiple photocopiers to a leasing agent without erasing the data contained on the copier hard drives. -
We are talking about an employee who has legitimate access to data to do their job and decides to take that data out of your systems and steal it. There is no technical means of preventing this, this is data that the end user was allowed to have and decided to steal. There is nothing to investigate except for the end user.
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@BRRABill said:
I don't think the breaches comes from doctor and nurses. If you look at the data, it seems to me to be the behind the scenes people.
That's possibly true. Although I know from this past week of nurses violating HIPAA left and right telling patients in facilities about other patients in the same facility.
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@BRRABill said:
Look at his. Puch.
Under a settlement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Affinity Health Plan, Inc. will settle potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules for $1,215,780. OCR’s investigation indicated that Affinity impermissibly disclosed the protected health information of up to 344,579 individuals when it returned multiple photocopiers to a leasing agent without erasing the data contained on the copier hard drives.Yup, medical centers are sloppy, no doubt there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I don't agree. If someone has downloaded without permission to the laptop, encryption or not, the data is stolen and out of the hospital's control. You are talking about cases where the data was allowed to be there, we are talking about where "there" is the transfer point of an ongoing theft.
HIPAA might protect you in the case of this and help with a cover up - but your facility is still going to get destroyed by the media if that data gets released and no one will care that the laptop was "encrypted", only that you allowed data to leave the facility.
I'm just saying that the cases are looked at, and in certain times (encrypted data, less than 500 records) it does not need to be reported.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That's possibly true. Although I know from this past week of nurses violating HIPAA left and right telling patients in facilities about other patients in the same facility.
In 2015 that is just ridiculous.
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@scottalanmiller said:
We are talking about an employee who has legitimate access to data to do their job and decides to take that data out of your systems and steal it. There is no technical means of preventing this, this is data that the end user was allowed to have and decided to steal. There is nothing to investigate except for the end user.
It is YOUR data that was used improperly. It is a breach and has to be reported.
If YOU did everything you were supposed to, you will be fine.
But it is still a loss of your data.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
That's possibly true. Although I know from this past week of nurses violating HIPAA left and right telling patients in facilities about other patients in the same facility.
In 2015 that is just ridiculous.
I've seen just about zero change of behaviour in medical professionals after HIPAA. Data is just disclosed left and right.
I wonder if you have to disclose breaches when you have nurses who just openly talk about patients. Do they classify that as just one breach at a time so tons and tons of one record breaches? Or is that one nurse (and it was many) accountable for the cumulative exposure of more than 500 over time? How close in chronological time do exposures have to be to be constituted a breach?
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
We are talking about an employee who has legitimate access to data to do their job and decides to take that data out of your systems and steal it. There is no technical means of preventing this, this is data that the end user was allowed to have and decided to steal. There is nothing to investigate except for the end user.
It is YOUR data that was used improperly. It is a breach and has to be reported.
If YOU did everything you were supposed to, you will be fine.
But it is still a loss of your data.
Sure, has to be reported. Has to be investigated. No question there. Just saying, if the breach happened outside of the IT systems IT doesn't even need to be investigated as the data was outside of controls when it happened.
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I know that just last year Baylor hospital system was using HIPAA violations to pull medical records to use in attempts to extort money from family members of patients in Texas.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I know that just last year Baylor hospital system was using HIPAA violations to pull medical records to use in attempts to extort money from family members of patients in Texas.
I mean, that is the reasoning behind it.
Or to prevent a corporation from mining the patient data for profit.
The joke it has evolved into is ridiculous.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I know that just last year Baylor hospital system was using HIPAA violations to pull medical records to use in attempts to extort money from family members of patients in Texas.
I mean, that is the reasoning behind it.
Or to prevent a corporation from mining the patient data for profit.
The joke it has evolved into is ridiculous.
Yup, and mining for profit is what they were doing there. And because there isn't public, mass breach but just individuals being extorted there is no way to get HIPAA involved by the public who are being extorted.
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This thread shot to the top of the most popular charts pretty quickly!
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@scottalanmiller said:
This thread shot to the top of the most popular charts pretty quickly!
And it's not even really done yet.
Though to be fair, it kind of delved out into the HIPAA landscape, which was inevitable but not necessarily desirable.
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Yes, the original question was more generic. HIPAA has much better reasons to look at general encryption.
