NYC hospital system breach affects 1.7 million

[OhioChick]

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. (HHC), the city's municipal hospital system, has begun notifying 1.7 million individuals about the theft of electronic record files that contained their personal information.

What type of personal information? Full names, addresses, Social Security numbers, medical record numbers, health insurance information, diagnosis and treatment data, telephone numbers, mothers' maiden names and birth, admission and discharge dates.

What happened? The computer backup tapes were stolen on Dec. 23 from the truck of HHC's record management services vendor, GRM Information Management Services, while being transported to a secure location. At the time of the crime, the truck was parked on the street in Manhattan while the driver was making a pickup from another GRM customer.

The stolen backup tapes contain 20 years of information about patients, staff, contractors, vendors and anyone else who was treated by or provided services at HHC's North Bronx Healthcare Network hospitals and clinics. This consists of Jacobi Medical Center, North Central Bronx Hospital, along with two other community health care centers: the Health Center at Tremont and the Health Center at Gun Hill.

More: http://www.scmagazineus.com/nyc-hospital-system-breach-affects-17-million/article/196997/

[MineralMan]

1. Morons! OTOH, it's unlikely that anyone will be interested in

accessing the data, even if they have the ability to do so. It probably will end up in a commercial dumpster somewhere when they figure out that they can't read it. I don't know.

[OhioChick]

2. A lot of this is going on...always..

NYC bus tour company's database hacked of credit card info

http://www.scmagazineus.com/nyc-bus-tour-companys-database-hacked-of-credit-card-info/article/193195/

Hacker accesses UConn customer database

http://www.scmagazineus.com/hacker-accesses-uconn-customer-database/article/194614/

Hackers may have stolen South Carolina employees' data

http://www.scmagazineus.com/hackers-may-have-stolen-south-carolina-employees-data/article/194402/

Hackers access UW-Madison computer systems

http://www.scmagazineus.com/hackers-access-uw-madison-computer-systems/article/192558/

[MineralMan]

3. Yah, but it's not usually done by stealing data backup tapes.

If it's a typical hospital system, it's old, outdated, and probably undecipherable by anyone under about 60 years old.

The big hospital my wife used to work in had a database system so old that nobody there knew how to deal with it properly. They hadn't been able to migrate the data to their current database system in any sort of reliable way, so they had three different database systems running. The one my wife used most of the time to register patients had a freaking dBase dot prompt on her machine! Bizarre.

[aquart]

4. That's a breach? Letting St. Vincent's close was a breach.

That factually and really affected the care of thousands of New Yorkers.

[customerserviceguy]

5. Using magnetic storage media was the culprit in this case

Transmitting backup information by secured online data transmission would have foiled anyone who was just hoping to chance upon something like this. While it's true that ancient methods of accessing the data would be needed, the materials to do that are probably widespread, if someone has half a mind to assemble the items necessary.

Hopefully, they're just dealing with some hopheads who are terribly disappointed that the containers didn't have raw cash in them.