B'Family Advocates

The theft of a pc from a main Northern California hospital system has put over four million people at risk that their personal and financial details is at danger. It might be one of the largest breaches of healthcare info and info in so many years. Regrettably this isn’t the first incident of theft and it unlikely will be the last, whether physical theft via stealing computers and other devices or via online theft – cyber crime. Cybersecurity can be a growing concern in many parts of the globe these days.

Over the past two years, healthcare companies and service providers have reported around 364 incidents which have involved the theft of loss of details. This info has ranged from names and addresses to Social Security numbers and even medical diagnoses. These incidents have affected nearly 18 million patients across the U.S.

The crime that took place close to Sacramento, California in the Sutter Health system affected more than 4 million alone. It occurred with a simple act of breaking a window with a stone in the health system’s affiliate, Sutter Medical Foundation. Desktop computers were among the items stolen which contained patient info dating back to 1995. Cybersecurity has been a rising concern amongst healthcare providers since these thefts have taken place.

The healthcare provider didn’t notify the public until nearly a month after the theft took location. The police had been known as, but noted that it was imperative for such organizations to take additional actions to protect the information and to make particular that this type of info theft didn’t occur again. Police were investigating the incident as a smash and grab kind of crime. They do not believe the info theft was the main concentrate of the robbery. Also, the police didn’t think the info on the stolen computers had been used by the criminals.

It is Federal law since 2009 that any healthcare info breaches be made public. The largest single theft of health care info happened when the U.S. military’s health insurance program lost backup tapes compromising much more than four.9 million patients.

Sutter did note that the pc was password protected, but that the information on patients was not encrypted, which drew sharp criticism from privacy and pc security professionals.

Oliver David contributes for Data Security Weekly about data security and often reports information on secure usb drive review.