Consumer & business misconductEnforcement BriefingNew in this edition
New York Attorney General Letitia James, with the attorneys general of Connecticut, Michigan and New Jersey, announced on November 6 a settlement with Perry Johnson & Associates, Inc. (PJ&A) and related companies over a March 2023 breach affecting 13.3 million people, including about 4.2 million New Yorkers. The release says hackers used a coding employee's credentials when the company did not require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for remote access. The companies will pay at least $300,000 in penalties, with an additional $9,700,000 due if they fail to meet the agreement's terms, and any Perry Johnson company that maintains protected health information (PHI) must keep an information security program and incident response protocol, multi-factor authentication, password management, encryption and asset management safeguards, annual HIPAA-consistent risk assessments, and policies on the collection, use, retention and disposal of health information. The New York Assurance of Discontinuance (AOD) makes findings against specific companies in the group, including that named entities acting as HIPAA business associates never conducted a HIPAA risk analysis and did not meet subcontractor requirements; The Assurance names PJ&A, PJ&A Coding and PJ&A Radiology as the business associates that never conducted a HIPAA risk analysis and did not meet the subcontractor requirements. The respondents neither admit nor deny the findings, and the assurance describes four of the companies (PJ&A, PJ&A Coding, PJ&A Radiology and Medical Transcription and Coding, Inc.) as insolvent and inactive as of the assurance's Effective Date.