Simple Mistakes – Not Always “The Hackers” – Can Cause Substantial Data Breaches

It is not always the feared and dreaded “hackers” that cause the exposure and breach of confidentiality of sensitive personal information. Sometimes it’s just simple mistakes, but the consequences can be much the same. Consider this situation:

NTreatment inadvertently exposed thousands of medical records online by neglecting to add password protection to one of its cloud servers, TechCrunch reports.

The health technology company, which handles electronic health records for doctors, had put 109,000 files in a cloud storage server hosted on Microsoft Azure. Many of these files held medical records, doctor’s notes, insurance claims, lab test results from third-party providers, and other sensitive information for patients in the United States. None of the information was encrypted.

Security Slipup Exposes Health Records & Lab Results

Published by Shawn E. Tuma

Shawn Tuma is an attorney who is internationally recognized in cybersecurity, computer fraud and data privacy law, areas in which he has practiced for nearly two decades. He is a Partner at Spencer Fane, LLP where he regularly serves as outside cybersecurity and privacy counsel to a wide range of companies from small to midsized businesses to Fortune 100 enterprises. You can reach Shawn by telephone at 972.324.0317 or email him at stuma@spencerfane.com.

Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from Business Cyber Risk

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading