Have you noticed the increasingly-complex cookie disclosure forms popping up on even the most unassuming website? These expanded forms aren’t present because digital businesses have suddenly decided informing customers about their data collection practices is an ethical imperative. Instead, these companies are most likely working with customers in both the U.S. and the EU, and they find themselves facing significant backlash if they aren’t following strict transparency rules. 

These GDPR rules define potentially devastating penalties for unassuming companies, and these penalties can come for the most unexpected reasons–if you don’t know the rules. 

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In October of 2015, the Excellus Health Plan suffered what was the largest HIPAA data breach of the year, with some 9.5 million patient records compromised. An investigation concluded in January 2021, stating that Excellus had five critical violations of HIPAA, including a failure to conduct risk analysis, implement sufficient network security measures and enact data security policies around data and access controls. 

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) settled with Excellus for $5.1 million from the five violations found and after years of audits and investigations. 

Don’t let this become your story if you are working in the healthcare sector. Understand compliance and penalty structures. 

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Imagine this scenario: you’ve received some test results from some procedure. Those results are to be moved between institutions because you have doctors in different departments of a healthcare system. 

Normally, we’d think that these institutions would electronically transmit these results through some secure channel… but then you see that your doctor has your results, in hand, in a USB key that they plug into their computer. 

This, of course, is a considerable risk. HIPAA regulations require that institutions protect PHI in specific ways with straightforward controls, and many threats can undermine physical media. 

So, what’s the issue with using USB thumb drives? 

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