One of the most renowned hospitals in a city known for its top-notch healthcare recently suffered a
data breach that exposed the personal health information of nearly 4,000 patients.
The laptop of a doctor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston was recently stolen and has not been recovered, according to a report from the data news site
CMIO. The computer contained the personal health information for about 3,900 patients, including short summaries of medical data, but did not contain personal information such as Social Security numbers.
"We take the incident extremely seriously, and have now accelerated implementation of a program to assist employees with protecting devices they purchase personally," said John Halamka, BIDMC's chief information security officer, according to the site. "We deeply regret and apologize for any concern or inconvenience this situation may cause our patients and families."
Ondrej Krehel, chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, writes regularly on his blog about how
data breaches of any type can affect consumers, and what victims can do to protect themselves when they are hit by such an incident.
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