Data Breach issues continue
We have been somewhat inundated with queries in respect of the HSE Data Breach. The scale of upset is quite extra ordinary, but by the fact the breach occurred, and the delay by the HSE in notifying data subjects. At this point hundreds of people have made inquiries as to possibility of issuing proceedings against the Health Service for breach of the data protection rights. While experience would suggest that the HSE will attempt to deny liability it is hard to see how these denials will be successful. There is however a very live issue before the European Court of Justice at the moment as to how much [...]
HSE Data Breach – November 2022 update
On the 5th April 2002 a hacker gained access to the Stephen P. Teale Data Center in California. The nondescript data centre was used by the state to process personal data relating to state employees. In total it is said that private information relating to 265,000 state employers was compromised on that day. The existence of hack was not made public by officials until the 24th May that year. On 6th June 2002, the Californian Senate Committee on Privacy, held an informational hearing on the incident to explore why the breach was not disclosed in a more proactive and timely fashion. Testimony at that hearing revealed that during [...]
HSE Hack – 12 months none the wiser
We have been a little quiet with our updates on this in the last number of months. It remains something of a mystery to us why 12 months after the hack the HSE has not informed any service users that they data may have been accessed in the course of the attack. The obligation to notify data subjects of a breach is a requirement of the GDPR. To date it seems only the Mercy Hospital in Cork notified data subjects that their data was accessed, and only those whose data was placed on the “dark web” were notified. This falls far short of the obligation the GDPR placed [...]
HSE Data Breach – September Update (is the truth starting to come out?)
On the 15th May 2021 the Data Protection Officer (DPO) for the HSE made a data breach notification to the Data Protection Commission. In that notification he said that a day earlier the HSE suffered a data security breach of its IT systems. After some difficulty we have obtained the official data breach notification pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. In the notification to the Data Protection Commission the stark facts were set out bluntly; approximately 4.9 million people had been affected by the breach, and the data disclosed to certain nefarious actors included Data Subject Identity data (name, surname, date of birth) PPSN details Contact details [...]
HSE Cyber Attack – July Update
It remains something of a surprise to us that there has been so little media coverage of late of the HSE Cyber Attack. Almost two months has now passed since the hacking incident and it appears that health services are still greatly affected and the Health Service Executive remains remarkably reticent to say what happened. They are even slower to say what is being done to remediate matters. We have spoken to a great many people about their experiences since the Cyber attack, and the following seems to be current position: Health Services From a health care point of view it seems that certain services, such as blood [...]
HSE Cyber Attack – A guide to the Law
Following from our blog post this day last week two things became immediately obvious; firstly people were very interested in the issue, and secondly, no one really understood the Law surrounding the GDPR, and the potential exposure the HSE has created for the Irish State. We have now written as well researched and cited a guide on the law as we possibly can given the time frame allowed. We will convert this into a HTML page in due course, but for now it may be downloaded here. As always, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries, and as before if you would like [...]