We focus on the latest news surrounding data breaches, leaks and hacks plus daily internet security articles.
For the victims, data leaks often take an emotional or psychological toll, with psychiatrists in some cases reporting significant distress in their patients. As such, when a leak involves mental health data, the effects can be even more devastating as the victims may already have mental health problems or conditions.
To have an added stress on top of their day-to-day difficulties could be unbearable.
Unfortunately, data breaches at healthcare organisations hit the headlines all too frequently, suggesting that there are still wide-reaching failings in their approaches to data protection. At Your Lawyers – the Data Leak Lawyers – we appreciate that the ongoing stigma surrounding mental health issues can make the effects of such data leaks even more damaging. As a leading firm of data breach lawyers, we are here to support mental health patients who have been failed by the organisations that are supposed to ensure their safety when it comes to data and privacy.
In today’s digital world, we often expect data breaches to occur in cyber settings. However, the risk of data leaks, loss and theft involving physical records and documents is also a cause for concern, and companies still need to be vigilant in protecting their hard material information.
Incidents involving physical records can happen a lot. The all too frequent neglect of physical records is exemplified in the case of Westbury House, a Hampshire care home that closed in 2016 after being deemed an unfit care provider.
It was reportedly found to have abandoned confidential staff and patient information in the uninhabited building. The information was only proved to have been removed and secured at the start of December, 4 years after the care home’s closure. Over the course of these years, obvious negligence could have allowed trespassers to breach the building and rifle through the files. A failure of data protection such as this cannot go unnoticed.
According to recent media reports, a large number of psychotherapy patients, who belong to the same large clinic in Finland, found themselves on the receiving end of blackmail from a data breach.
Vastaamo, a countrywide practice, appears to have been targeted in two separate breaches, one potentially occurring in March 2019, and an initial attack as far back as November 2018. It appears that victims’ personal data was stolen from the company’s data storage system.
Although this is not a case we can represent people for, with it not being in England or Wales, it is an important one to consider. Ultimately, the risks – as we often advise – when it comes to this kind of data breach can be severe.
There is still time to make a claim in the Well Pharmacy data breach action.
In 2018, Well Pharmacy, a major pharmacy chain, was responsible for leaking the details of over 24,000 staff and locum workers, after the data was accidentally included in an email.
Since the breach, The Data Leak Lawyers has been working hard to take on claims for affected employees ever since we launched legal action in early 2019. We have been working on the action for just over two years now, and our door is still open to any claimants who have yet to come forward.
Whitburn GP, Dr Thair Altaii, has been jailed for privacy violations of female patients, four years after his original court date in 2014.
Dr Thair Altaii was first taken to court after images and videos of female patients were reportedly found on his personal laptop. The police investigated the matter after a complaint from one of his patients was made where she had suspected that she was being recorded.
The filming of patients can amount to a complete breach of privacy and the Data Protection Act, as well as the Human Rights Act. Any patients who have been a victim of Dr Thair Altaii could be entitled to make a compensation claim with No Win, No Fee representation. As a leading firm of data breach lawyers, we are very experienced in the complex field of data breach law and have settled cases for medical privacy violations where patients had been recorded without knowledge or consent.
Human error medical data breaches can be extremely common, and a big reason is due to the fact that many medical organisations do not direct adequate resources into preventing such breaches.
It is extremely important for medical institutions to keep the sensitive data that they hold secure and protected. When human error medical data breaches occur, an event like this can serve to undermine the GDPR and the medical staff’s responsibility to keep patient data safe. It can also undermine the trust that the victims have in the services being provided.
If you have been the victim of a human error medical data breach, do not hesitate to get in touch to see if you have a claim to make. As a leading firm of data breach compensation lawyers, our expert legal team has years of experience helping people in the complex field of data breach law, and we may be able to help you get the justice that you deserve.
It is important to know that you can claim for a serious patient data breach.
If your personal and sensitive medical data has been misused or exposed as part of a healthcare data breach, you could be eligible to make a substantial data breach compensation claim, dependant on exactly what information is involved.
Your Lawyers (T/A The Data Leak Lawyers) is a leading, specialist data breach law firm with years of experience in representing victims of medical data breach compensation legal cases. We have been at the forefront of data breach action since 2014, fighting for victims in some of the most infamous healthcare breaches like the 56 Dean Street Clinic Leak. We have helped thousands of people claim millions in damages across a number of areas of law, and we may be able to help you too.
A big problem surrounding medical data breaches, and one of the most concerning, is when a member of staff breaches confidentiality by accessing patient records without clinical justification.
We entrust medical employees and NHS staff to safeguard our personal medical data and only access it as part of our treatment or care. That is why it is so concerning when a member of staff is accessing patient records with no medical reasoning or no proper authority to do so.
It is sometimes hard to know what exactly they are using the data for, potentially putting individuals at risk by exposing sensitive data. In many cases, the perpetrators know the victims, which can make the distress for the victims even worse.
The NHS was subject to some of the worst healthcare cyberattacks of 2019. The year saw a continuous increase of data breaches with two-thirds of healthcare organisations in the UK understood to have been involved in some form of data breach last year.
Many of these data breaches stem from virus and malware attacks which often arise from a compromised third-party device.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by Centrify reportedly found that the NHS has blocked some 11.4 million cyberattacks between 2016 and 2019. This shows just how much the NHS is a huge target for cybercriminals, and how they have ended up being targeted for some of the worst healthcare cyberattacks of 2019.
Data breaches are often serious, and data breaches in hospitals can be some of the most dangerous and serious types of incidents there can be.
Hospitals hold extremely sensitive information about a huge number of individuals, and that information can be very dangerous in the wrong hands. It can also be distressing for victims when such information is exposed.
Medical databases are commonly attacked by cybercriminals, and we represent thousands of people for data breaches with many of them involving hospitals data and incredibly sensitive medical information. This information can be targeted for a variety of reasons, including for the monetary value of highly sensitive data that can be held for ransom. read more
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