Valley View Security Breach

When filing electronic or personal health records online, anything is possible in regards to security breaches. Sometimes they can be avoided. Other times hackers are able to crack codes in encrypted data. When this happens, the clinic or hospital is held responsible for patients’ confidential information such as social security numbers and credit cards becoming accessible by an unauthorized third party. In July 2010, the Attorney General’s office was informed of a security breach involving at least 800,000 patients at South Shore Hospital in Massachusetts. Nearly two years later on May 24, 2012, the facility paid $750,000 to resolve the situation. This particular breach revealed patient names, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers and personal health information such as a diagnosis. During this investigation, the Attorney General discovered that South Shore transported 473 unencrypted discs containing …show more content…
This particular virus collected encrypted data in a private folder that included information such as credit card numbers, names of patients, addresses, phone, social security and patient numbers along with dates related to admittance and release. When the hospital discovered this error, they did not know how long the virus had been in the system. Valley View eventually notified 5,400 patients affected by this breach in an open letter on March 17th. Since then, Valley View has upgraded its security program and expanded on its procedures. A staff member could’ve unknowingly clicked on a suspicious link releasing the Trojan horse into the system. It’s also quite possible that this particular facility did not update their anti-malware protection program. One way this computer virus could’ve been prevented was by installing the most-recent antivirus or malware protection program. Another way includes avoiding suspicious