Another week, another health system data loss. This week the prize goes to Austin's Seton Healthcare Network, which lost personal information on 7,800 patients last week when a thief stole a laptop from a secured building. The data pertains to patients who visited a Seton ER or clinic since July 2005. The laptop's hard drive doesn't contain any clinical information, but a Seton spokesperson admitted that there could be Social Security numbers or Medicaid numbers on the drive. The thief had unfortunate timing: Seton is in the process of encrypting data stored on its laptops, but hadn't installed the encryption software on this particular laptop yet. (The laptop is password-protected, but FierceHealthIT readers know how little that would mean to a determined black-hat hacker.) Seton began sending out letters to affected patients last week.
To learn more about the laptop theft:
- read this article from KVUE.com