Data leak puts Idaho hospital employees in danger

Contributed by Roumiana Deltcheva (Monday, August 02, 2010) | Category : Email security

A backup tape containing the private and sensitive data more than 1,000 current and former employees at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, was recently lost.

The tape contains personal information including names, addresses, birth dates and social security numbers. The backup was reportedly lost in March, however the hospital and its parent company, Trinity Health, were alerted to it toward the end of June. Consulting group Mercer, which created and stored the tape, delayed telling the companies about the data leak because the company needed to "reconstruct the tape and determine what data had been lost and who was affected," according to Northwest Cable News.

Mercer does not believe any personal information has been viewed or used to date. Furthermore, the company doesn't believe any unauthorized access will take place, as the tape is "not a readily accessible type of storage medium," NWCN states.

While the data lost by Mercer was saved on a physical tape, many companies have begun to implement data-leak prevention software into their systems to increase data security. Typically, healthcare organizations experiencing data leaks receive fines from their governing authorities for not having strong enough security practices in place. Recently, Health Net was fined $250,000 in Connecticut for this exact scenario.