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Military Healthcare Data Stolen
An anonymous reader writes "TriWest, a federal contractor providing healthcare to the military, had computer hardware stolen from one of their offices. Social security numbers, credit card numbers, and healthcare information about 500,000 US military personnel and their families is contained on the stolen hardware. The AP picked up the story. The theft is also being covered by the Salt Lake Tribune and the Arizona Republic. This opens the door to speculation about who would be interested in the data held by a military contractor and what they will do with the information."
This opens the door to speculation about who would be interested in the data held by a military contractor and what they will do with the information.
Well if the military keeps a record of imunizations of its soldiers, then any country wishing to use bio weapons upon the US could use their medical record to determine which viruses/bacteria/pathogens they are weakest against.
I work in healthcare
Healthcare sysadmins are often pretty poorly paid and are often people who would not make it in a business environment, and the security is often minimal. I know, I 'test' it.
I think we will have a few more of these disasters until the healthcare industry realises that IT is part of its core business and has to pay accordingly.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
What makes people so sure they were after the computer for that data? They probably stole it so they could play The Sims Online.
Yeah. Like the way the Mad Anthrax Mailer suddenly went from a "must get" when it was thought to be a filthy foriegner to a "drop like hot potato" when it started looking like ties to senior millitary research labs.
if you haven't got physical security, you haven't got ANY security.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
So this suggests that the U.S. Government's Total Information Awareness program would be a nice, juicy target. After all, everything's in one place...
As a member of the military, I am ~really~ curious to know what they could do with that info.
/alot/ more info. Alot.
Someone mentioned immunization records. But who cares if some 80 yr old retired Sgt Major had his TB recently? And untill you correlate Soldiers with Units, that info won't do you much good. If you wanted to know that, why not steal if from the Unit... it wouldn't be to much harder; and would provide
I personally think that they where after SSN's, and just happened to view a haul of 500k as too good to pass up. I don't believe that the fact it was military was of consequence. Which is why I also believe that it was American Civilians that did it, not some Foreign Agent. If so, I'm f*'ing pissed.
I don't need to say how well you can screw someone over with thier SSN; imagine the entire Military preoccupied with sorting out thier lifes; worried about a wife (or husband) and children having to deal with identity thieft while the soldier is busy overseas.
--Cam
All jocks think about is sports. All nerds think about is sex.
Keep in mind that when geeks like us talk about 'harddrives', that's not the same thing as what the general population refers to as 'harddrives'. Nearly every non-geek I've met thinks that the case is the hard drive.
These thieves may have stolen the computers (leaving the bulky monitors), and the non-geek reporter wrote that they only took the harddrives.
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