14 DAY TRIAL // TRICARE recently released a statement reporting a breach which resulted in the theft of personal and medical information belonging to 4.9 million military clinic and hospital patients.
Backup tapes containing patient information from between 1992 and 2011 were illegally retrieved from Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) on September 14, but the public was only announced now because according to TRICARE representatives, “We did not want to raise undue alarm in our beneficiaries and so wanted to determine the degree of risk this data loss represented before making notifications.“
The records seem to contain social security numbers, addresses and phone numbers, and some things regarding personal health, but apparently the info cannot be accessed by anyone as “Retrieving the data on the tapes requires knowledge of and access to specific hardware and software and knowledge of the system and data structure.”
The involved organizations are working together to announce all the implicated parties meanwhile developing safety measures that will prevent such events from further happening.
A link to the US Federal Trade Commission's website was posted in the statement, where potential victims can get informed on what steps need to be taken in order to protect themselves against identity theft attempts.
The beneficiaries who do get affected by the unfortunate incident can get more details by calling a toll free hotline set up especially for them.
In reply to the issue, security consultant Kate Borten, president of The Marblehead Group, revealed for Healthcare Information Security "What's particularly distressing about this news is that TRICARE should be encrypting. The organization should have had reasonable controls in place."
This incident should be a wake-up call for companies in charge of safekeeping the personal information of millions of people.