1.5 Million Medical Files At Risk In Health Net Data Breach

[kirniki <kirniki () gmail com>]

http://www.courant.com/health/hc-healthbreach1119.artnov19,0,1798384.story

A hard drive with seven years of personal and medical information on
about 1.5 million Health Net customers, including 446,000 in
Connecticut, was lost six months ago and was first reported Wednesday,
state and company officials said.

The insurance company informed the state attorney general's office and
the Department of Insurance Wednesday of the security breach that puts
personal medical records at risk in a historic lapse, the first of its
kind to be publicly reported.

A portable, external hard drive with Social Security numbers and
medical records "disappeared" and is still missing from the insurer's
Northeast headquarters in Shelton, a Health Net spokeswoman said
Wednesday.

The hard drive contains Social Security numbers, medical records and
health information dating to 2002 for 1.5 million customers — past and
present — in Arizona, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, the
spokeswoman said.

The data were compressed, but not encrypted. The information is
formatted as images and requires a special computer program to be
read, state and company officials said. Health Net plans to send out
letters to its customers notifying them of the breach.
[..]
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