The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights reached a settlement with Cottage Health for $3 million over violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Cottage Health suffered two data breaches that impacted more than 62,500 individuals. The first incident involved a server left accessible on the internet, while the second involved a misconfigured server an IT team worked on in response to a troubleshooting ticket. The $3 million settlement added to an all-time record year for HIPAA enforcement activity for the OCR. The agency received $28.7 million from enforcement actions in 2018, up from the previous high of $23.5 million in 2016.
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