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Six Missing HDDs Contain Health Information of Nearly a Million Patients (corporate-ir.net)
Lucas123 writes: Health insurer Centene Corp. revealed that it is looking for six HDDs with information on 950,000 customers that went missing during a data project that was using laboratory results to improve the health outcomes of patients. The drives not only contain sensitive personal identification information, such as addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers, but they also contain health information. "While we don't believe this information has been used inappropriately," said Michael Neidorff, CEO of Centene.
If you compile information into huge databases, this is what you can expect. Personally, I want all my medical records on paper charts stored in my doctor's office. Unless you agree to have your information published on the internet, don't accept electronic records. I assume that in this specific case the ssd's were lost. Even if they end up on eBay, the new owners will most likely clear the old data.
That policy choice would kill a lot of people because it would prevent data mining to learn how to generate better health outcomes.
Trade offs.
Good thing /. has editors, otherwise every shmuck could post anything he wants, without regard to basics like complete sentences.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
One of the for-profit health insurance companies who just raked in a huge windfall as a result of the largest government-to-corporate handout in the history of government were too drunk on their power to bother with data security.
Yep, absolutely nobody is surprised by this in the least. Turns out hookers and blow don't manage this stuff very well on their own.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Researchers don't need SSN for patient. Just assign each patient a number and refer to them that way.
A better solution would be to get rid of the idiotic notion that SSNs can be both widely known and secret. Their use for authentication (rather than identification) should be banned. They should be considered public information.