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Press Release
Tiversa Commits to Support Breast
Cancer Awareness
CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PA, October1, 2009 - In recognition of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Tiversa has committed to donating a portion of revenue driven by new customer acquisitions in the month of October to support breast cancer awareness and education. All proceeds benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure®.
As the leader in P2P Intelligence and Security, Tiversa finds that the healthcare sector is suffering data breaches, similar to those that have plagued the financial services and retail industries. Losses have translated to privacy violations, compliance issues, costly fines, embarrassment, and in other cases, criminals have exploited found Personal Health Information (PHI) to commit fraud or medical identity theft.
"Among the exposed have been hundreds of thousands of cancer patient and AIDS clinic records, so it was an ideal fit to build awareness around this data loss issue while helping to support a cause such as Susan G. Komen for the Cure®," says Scott Harrer, Brand Director at Tiversa.
Confidential data hemorrhaging from health-care providers pose
financial risks to firms and medical risks to patients. Given the highly fragmented US health-care system, breached data comes from
many different sources, typically representative of the Extended Enterprise. Examples include ambulatory health-care providers, acute-care hospitals, physician groups, medical laboratories, insurance carriers, back-offices of health maintenance organizations, and outsourced service providers such as billing, collection, and transcription firms.
“The information being shared across these networks is staggering. In a typical day, Tiversa might see the Protected Health Information (PHI) of tens of thousands being disclosed by a hospital or medical billing company, the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of an organization’s global workforce being exposed through a third-party payroll provider and a Fortune 500 company exposing corporate IP, such as pre-patent documentation or executive board minutes, says Robert Boback, Tiversa CEO.
Findings released in February 2009, in a collaborative research study (“Data Hemorrhages in the Health-Care Sector”) between Tiversa and The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College highlight these same risks by focusing on the exposure rate of sensitive data in the healthcare industry.
Over a two-week period, Dartmouth College researchers and Tiversa searched file-sharing networks for key terms associated with the top ten publicly traded health care firms in the country, and discovered a treasure trove of sensitive documents. Found was a spreadsheet from an AIDS clinic with 232 client names, including Social Security numbers, addresses and birth-dates. Discovered were databases for a hospital system that contained detailed information on more than 20,000 patients, including Social Security numbers, contact details, insurance records, and diagnosis information.
Senstitive data breaches emanating from third-parties, such as medical billing companies and physician groups put patients at a very high risk to experience fraud or medical identity theft despite the fact that patients may have taken steps to protect themselves by being diligent with their personal information.
Tiversa provides P2P Intelligence and Security Services to corporations, government agencies and individuals based on patent pending technologies that can monitor over 450 million users issuing 1.5 billion searches a day. Requiring no software or hardware, Tiversa detects, locates and identifies exposed files in real-time, while assisting in remediation and prevention efforts.
For more information, please contact Tiversa at (724) 940-9030. |
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