It's déjà vu all over again. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which has already been part of one high-profile data loss scandal within the past 12 months, reported this week that an Alabama hospital has lost data on 1.8 million veterans and doctors. In this case, the data was on a portable hard drive, used to back up the employee's desktop computer, which has been missing from an Alabama VA location for about three weeks. The drive contained Social Security and other confidential information on about 535,000 patients, and also housed billing information for 1.3 million doctors across the country. The VA has said that it doesn't have any reason to think anyone has stolen data from the drive, but has offered free credit monitoring to any concerned consumer.
For more background on the data loss:
- read this Associated Press item