HIPAA Breach Report for January 2018

The Paubox Breach Report analyzed HIPAA breach reporting submitted to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) in December to analyze the types of breaches of unsecured protected health information (PHI) affecting 500 or more people.

HIPAA Breaches Ranked by People Affected

Top Three Breach Types

• Network Server breaches ranked the highest with 71,759 people’s PHI hacked or stolen in December. Network Server returned to the top spot after having zero reported breaches the month prior.
• Paper/Films breaches ranked second with PHI of 27,894 people breached.
• Desktop Computer breaches came in a close third with 27,113 people having their PHI breached.

Bottom Three Breach Types

• Laptop ranked as the lowest number of people’s PHI being breached in December with 2,250 breaches.
• Other Portable Electronic Device breaches ranked second lowest at 8,745.
• Other were the third lowest type of breach as ranked by people affected with 19,487.

HIPAA Breaches Ranked by Occurrence

The Most Common

• Network Server ranked as the most common breach types in December with 7 reported breaches. This is a big jump from the month prior, where there were zero reported breaches of this type.
• Paper/Films came in as the second most common breach type with 5 incidents.
• Email came in third with 4 reported breaches.

The Least Common

• Desktop Computer was the least common breach type with 1.
• Laptop, Other and Other Portable Electronic Device rounded out the bottom with 2 breaches each.

Takeaways

Unfortunately, December was more in the “norm” for HIPAA breaches. Network Server took the top spot as both number of people affected and number of breach incidents.

Email remained in the top 3 category for breaches by occurrence.

Full Data

Click here to download the raw data.

About the Paubox HIPAA Breach Report

The Paubox HIPAA Breach Report analyzes breaches that affected 500 or more individuals as reported in the HHS Wall of Shame in December 2017.

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