Cybersecurity breaches reported to the US Department of Health and Human Services

Description

Since October 2009 organizations in the U.S. that store data on human health are required to report any incident that compromises the confidentiality of 500 or more patients / human subjects (45 C.F.R. 164.408) These reports are publicly available. HHSCyberSecurityBreaches was downloaded from the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015-02-26

Usage

data(HHSCyberSecurityBreaches)

Format

A dataframe containing 1151 observations of 9 variables:

Name.of.Covered.Entity

A character vector identifying the organization involved in the breach.

State

A factor giving the two-letter abbreviation of the US state or territory where the breach occurred. This has 52 levels for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia (DC) and Puerto Rico (PR).

Covered.Entity.Type

A factor giving the organization type of the covered entity with levels "Business Associate", "Health Plan", "Healthcare Clearing House", and "Healthcare Provider"

Individuals.Affected

An integer giving the number of humans whose records were compromised in the breach. This is 500 or greater; U.S. law requires reports of breaches involving 500 or more records but not of breaches involving fewer.

Breach.Submission.Date

Date when the breach was reported.

Type.of.Breach

A factor giving one of 29 different combinations of 7 different breach types, separated by ", ": "Hacking/IT Incident", "Improper Disposal", "Loss", "Other", "Theft", "Unauthorized Access/Disclosure", and "Unknown"

Location.of.Breached.Information

A factor giving one of 47 different combinations of 8 different location categories: "Desktop Computer", "Electronic Medical Record", "Email", "Laptop", "Network Server", "Other", "Other Portable Electronic Device", "Paper/Films"

Business.Associate.Present

Logical = (Covered.Entity.Type == "Business Associate")

Web.Description

A character vector giving a narrative description of the incident.

Details

This contains the breach report data downloaded 2015-02-26 from the US Health and Human Services. This catalogs reports starting 2009-10-21. Earlier downloads included a few breaches prior to 2009 when the law was enacted (inconsistently reported), and a date for breach occurrence in addition to the date of the report.

The following corrections were made to the file:

• UCLA Health System, breach date 11/4/2011, had cover entity added as "Healthcare Provider"

• Wyoming Department of Health, breach date 3/2/2010 had breach type changed to "Unauthorized Access / Disclosure"

• Computer Program and Systems, Inc. (CPSI), breach date 3/30/2010 had breach type changed to "Unauthorized Access / Disclosure"

• Aetna, breach date 7/27/2010 had breach type changed to "Improper Disposal' (see explanation below), breach date 5/24/2010 name changed to City of Charlotte, NC (Health Plan) and state changed to NC

• Mercer, breach date 7/30/2010 state changed to MI

• Not applicable, breach date 11/2/2011 name changed to Northridge Hospital Medical Center and state changed to CA

• na, breach date 4/4/2011 name changed to Brian J Daniels DDS, Paul R Daniels DDS, and state changed to AZ

• NA, breach date 5/27/2011 name changed to and Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System state changed to SC

• NA, breach date 7/4/2011 name changed to Yanz Dental Corporation and state changed to CA

Source

"Breaches Affecting 500 or More Individuals" downloaded from the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015-02-26

See Also

breaches for an earlier download of these data. The exact reporting requirements and even the number and definitions of variables included in the data.frame have changed.

Examples

##
## 1.  mean(Individuals.Affected)
##
mean(HHSCyberSecurityBreaches$Individuals.Affected)
##
## 2.  Basic Breach Types
##
tb <- as.character(HHSCyberSecurityBreaches$Type.of.Breach)
tb. <- strsplit(tb, ', ')
table(unlist(tb.))
# 8 levels, but two are the same apart from 
# a trailing blank.  
##
## 3.  Location.of.Breached.Information 
##
lb <- as.character(HHSCyberSecurityBreaches[[
          'Location.of.Breached.Information']])
table(lb)
lb. <- strsplit(lb, ', ')
table(unlist(lb.))
# 8 levels 
table(sapply(lb., length))
#   1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8 
#1007  119   13    8    1    1    1    1 
# all 8 levels together observed once 
# There are 256 = 2^8 possible combinations 
# of which 47 actually occur in these data.