According to a February 12, 2019 Press Release
from Protenus, a developer of analytics for patient privacy
monitoring and compliance, 15,085,302 patient records were breached
in 2018 – a startling number made even more startling by the
fact that the number of breached patient records in 2018 is three
times greater than the number of records breached in 2017.
As evidenced by the Protenus data and information reported by
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
("DHHS"), Office of Civil Rights ("OCR"), a
growing number of these breaches relate to third-party hacking,
ransomware, and related malware incidents (collectively,
"Hacking/IT Incidents"). As such, the OCR data shines a
bright light on the obvious difficulties that healthcare entities
("Covered Entities") covered by the security and
confidentiality requirements applicable to protected health
information ("PHI") under the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and 45 CFR Parts 160
