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