Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island (WIH) agreed to pay $150,000 in a settlement with the Massachusetts attorney general's office on Wednesday following a massive data breach that included the loss of personal information of nearly 12,000 Massachusetts-based patients.

More U.S. cities are striving to improve their outdated IT operations — an effort that could save these local governments time and money. Migrating data from legacy data centers to the latest architectures and tools is a complicated process that can be timely and can result in data loss if not carried out correctly. To simplify the process and save on costs, these government agencies are using the cloud in a backup role, as a resource to absorb any data spikes that can occur and as a disaster recovery unit.

To help organizations better understand the challenges of backup, disaster recovery and secure access, Acronis has created the "8 Noble Truths" of data protection. To view all 8 Noble Truths, please download the whitepaper. This is the seventh post in an eight-part series to help you protect your data:

Data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus last year served as a wake-up call for retailers and customers alike to shore up their data protection. But health care organizations have been slower to follow suit. Earlier this year the FBI warned the industry that it’s particularly vulnerable to cybersecurity threats compared with other sectors.