The General Hospital Corporation and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization Inc. (Mass General) has agreed to pay the U.S. government $1,000,000 to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today.
via Insurance News – Massachusetts General Hospital Settles Potential HIPAA Violations.
If anyone doubted that there is a cost to ignoring privacy regulations, $5.3 million in penalties doled out last week for violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) should put such doubt to rest. Not only is the government pursuing enforcement, but it is going to come down particularly hard on organizations that don’t take it seriously.
via Don’t view HIPAA fines as cost a of doing business – FierceCIO.
Microsoft also said it was close to getting FISMA certification for its BPOS services. It has already achieved the certification for its data centers and expects to complete the process for the applications within a month or so
via Microsoft Fights Google for Government Dollars – PCWorld Business Center.
Exeter Government Services of Gaithersburg, Md., will develop the toolkit under a contract valued at $720,000. The application will be posted on the NIST website when it’s completed. The federal economic stimulus package provided funding for the project
via NIST to Offer HIPAA Toolkit.
Half of U.S. government Web sites are vulnerable to commonplace DNS attacks because they haven’t deployed a new authentication mechanism that was mandated in 2008, a new study shows.
via Half of federal Web sites fail DNS security test.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a draft of its guidelines for implementing enterprisewide information risk management. The document defines the underlying principles for implementing the Federal Information Security Management Act.
via FISMA capstone document released by NIST — Government Computer News.
Over the summer, the company launched Google Apps for Government and announced that it had received FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) certification, which allowed it to store sensitive, yet unclassified, information, which makes up about 80 percent of all government data.
via Google wins email, apps contract with U.S. GSA | ZDNet.
According to the result of a new survey published by MeriTalk, an online community for government IT professionals, 85 percent of federal information security leaders have not utilized CyberScope, an online reporting tool designed to reduce the amount of wasted dollars the government spends annually on cyber security compliance reports. Of those that have used CyberScope, the survey entitled “FISMA’s Facelift: In the Eye of the Beholder,” found that everyone has given the tool an “A” or “B” rating.
via Survey: Federal IT leaders lack confidence in CyberScope |.
In an effort to make cloud solutions more easily available to government agencies, the US General Services Administration (www.gsa.gov) has awarded 11 companies a five-year, government-wide Blanket Purchase Agreement to make Infrastructure as a Service solutions available to all levels of government through the gateway “Apps.gov”.