HHS OCR breach portal (HIPAA breaches affecting 500 or more individuals) Primary notice
Posted on the HHS Office for Civil Rights breach portal with a submission date of Oct. 15, 2018.
- Organization as reported
- HealthFitness, IL
- Entity type as reported
- Business Associate
- Category as reported
Unauthorized Access/Disclosure
- Location of information as reported
- Other
- Submission date
- Oct. 15, 2018
- Observed by BreachRecords
- 2026-10-18 16:15 UTC (revision 13656, row:4795)
- Archived copy
- Held in the private archive (provenance)
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a settlement with Health Fitness Corporation. OCR enforces the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules. The HIPAA Security Rule establishes national standards to protect and secure our health care system by requiring administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, availability, and security of electronic PHI (ePHI). The “Risk Analysis provision” requires a regulated organization to conduct an accurate and thorough assessment of the potential risks and vulnerabilities ePHI. “Conducting an accurate and thorough risk analysis is not only required but is also the first step to prevent or mitigate breaches of electronic protected health information,” said OCR Acting Director Anthony Archeval. “Effective cybersecurity includes knowing who has access to electronic health information and ensuring that it is secure.” The settlement marks the fifth enforcement action in OCR’s Risk Analysis Initiative. This enforcement initiative was created to focus select investigations on compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule Risk Analysis provision, a key Security Rule requirement, and the foundation for effective cybersecurity and the protection of ePHI and to highlight the critical need for organizations to prioritize compliance with this foundational HIPAA Security Rule requirement. The settlement resolves OCR’s investigation of Health Fitness, which OCR initiated after receiving four reports from Health Fitness, over a three-month period of breaches of unsecured protected health information. Health Fitness filed the breach reports on behalf of multiple covered entities as their business associate. Health Fitness reported that beginning approximately in August 2015, ePHI became discoverable on the internet and was exposed to automated search devices (web crawlers) resulting from a software misconfiguration on the server…