This week, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published a January 2018 newsletter focusing on “cyber extortion.” Cyber extortion often involves an attacker gaining access to an organization’s computer system, stealing sensitive information, and threatening to publish the information. Healthcare and public health organizations are often the targets of these attacks, so affected data frequently includes protected health information, or PHI. The OCR newsletter indicates that incidents of cyber extortion have been steadily increasing over the past several years and will continue to disrupt many organizations.… Continue Reading