Another slew of leaks from mobile devices has hit universities and hospitals. Instances of tens of thousands of victims and flagrant neglect of procedure now no longer surprise us. According to the InfoWatch Analytical Center, the public is now used to it.
The Gulf Coast medical center, Tennessee, has been hit by two leaks at once via mobile computers. As yet, there have been no incidents of the illegal use of the compromised data. However, identity theft is highly likely given that the lost laptops contained patients’ names and Social Security numbers. The medical center has offered a year’s free bank account monitoring to protect the 10,000 people affected. InfoWatch experts point out that it was simply necessary to encrypt the data on the laptops. However, the data was not encrypted and the incident will cost the company at least 100 times more than the protection systems which would have prevented it from happening in the first place.
Meanwhile, in Canada, information about children who participated in various research projects has been stolen from the Hospital for Sick Children. The computer contained patient illness histories and other personal details. The employee from whose car the laptop was stolen was conducting data analysis. Immediately following the incident, hospital representatives contacted Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner and all the patients affected by the leak received postal notification.
Also, the Tokyo University of Science reports the leak of 8,800 students’ personal data. At fault, was a fifty-six year old professor who copied the details onto an external disk drive to take home. The drive was stolen on his way home and now the names, addresses and data on grades it contained may soon be available to large numbers of people. The university has announced that it expects to see the lost data made available on the Internet, and that the professor will be duly disciplined.
Denis Zenkin, InfoWatch’s Marketing Director, said “Several tens of thousands of people have suffered from leaks. These are no trivial numbers if one thinks about it. But such is the reality of life today: A leak of this size no longer surprises anybody. Half a million or a million – that’s enough to scare us. But a few thousand people… What do they matter? But if this tendency continues, the day will come when even millions will no longer be of interest. The goal of companies which provide leak protection is the total eradication of such incidents – period – whether it be the details of a million people, secret technology or a solitary document detailing an enterprise’s internal structure.”
Sources: News13 WMBB-TV, CNW Group, Mainichi Daily News
