Backing up your data is good. Moving it off-site is better, but not in this horror story. Thieves broke into a car belonging to an IT employee of Providence Healthcare System in Oregon. They took disks and tapes containing information on 365,000 patients which were apparently being stored in the car as off-site backup. The records included names, addresses, Social Security numbers and private health information from patients receiving home healthcare services from Providence, and also names of 1,500 current and former employees of the division. The theft happened three weeks ago on New Years Eve, and Providence is being criticized heavily for waiting this long to disclose it. Original reports that the data was encrypted are apparently not true. Only a laptop bag, containing the disks but no computer, was stolen, suggesting that the thieves knew what they were looking for.
- see this article from Oregon Live