HHS OCR breach portal (HIPAA breaches affecting 500 or more individuals) Primary notice
Posted on the HHS OCR breach portal (HIPAA breaches affecting 500 or more individuals) with a submission date of Oct. 16, 2015.
- Organization as reported
- Emergence Health Network, TX
- Entity type as reported
- Healthcare Provider
- Category as reported
Hacking/IT Incident
- Location of information as reported
- Network Server
- Submission date
- Oct. 16, 2015
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 14688, row:5827)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
The covered entity (CE), Texas Health & Human Services Commission, detected unauthorized remote login activity from Asia to a computer server belonging to a business associate (BA), Emergence Health Network, which had been compromised by a brute force attack. The attack potentially affected the names, addresses, dates of birth, demographic, financial, clinical, and treatment information of approximately 11,000 individuals being discharged from El Paso County Jail. Following the breach, the BA retired outdated software, implemented new policies and procedures to require regular patching of software, installed a new intrusion protection detection system, updated firewalls, strengthened configurations on servers, and implemented internet protocol filtering. It also implemented a new training program for workforce members. Following OCR’s investigation, the BA updated its Breach Notification Policy.