More on a breach reported here last week, this from Natalie Johnson:
In early February, an employee of the National Collection Office (NCO) Financial Systems Inc., a debt-collection agency that UW Medicine contracts with, violated security and compromised at least 50 confirmed contacts, and as many as 80 more are being investigated.
“UW Medicine was informed by law enforcement in early February that records containing Social Security numbers and credit-card information for a number of UW Medicine patients were found on a person who was arrested for an unrelated crime,” Tina Mankowski, director of the Health Sciences Center, wrote in an e-mail.
Mankowski stressed that no medical records were involved but that patients whose personal information was compromised could be victims of identity theft.
The King County Sheriff’s Office originally discovered the stolen financial information during a routine arrest, said Jim Laing, King County Sheriff’s spokesperson. King 5 reported the parole-violation-related arrest of a man whose girlfriend works at NCO. She was later arrested as well.
Read more in The Daily of the University of Washington.