Cedars-Sinai said it will mail letters to patients identified as being potentially affected by a data breach.
Cedars Sinai is one of the world’s largest academic healthcare organizations. They provide cutting-edge patient care, medical education, and biomedical research. Unfortunately, they recently experienced a data breach that affected more than 500,000 patients.
What happened?
The laptop of a Cedars Sinai employee was stolen on July 17, 2018. The laptop contained the personal information of 562,000 patients, including names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and medical record numbers.
How did this happen?
The employee’s laptop was unencrypted and did not have password protection. This allowed the thief to easily access the patient information.
What information was compromised?
The stolen laptop contained the personal information of 562,000 patients, including names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and medical record numbers.
What is Cedars Sinai doing about it?
Cedars Sinai is in the process of notifying all affected patients and offering them free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. They are also investigating the incident and taking steps to prevent something like this from happening again in the future.
Here are some tips for preventing data breaches:
1. Implement strong security measures, such as two-factor authentication and data encryption.
2. Train employees on how to identify and avoid phishing attacks.
3. Perform regular security audits to identify weaknesses in your system.
4. Have a plan in place for responding to a data breach.
If you’re a patient of Cedars Sinai, or any other healthcare organization, it’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest security measures. By taking steps to protect your information, you can help keep your personal data safe.
Read more on the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cedars-breach-20140823-story.html
