Yale School of Medicine today began notifying approximately 1,000 people whose clinical health information was contained on a laptop computer that was stolen last month.
There is no indication that any individual information on the computer has been misused, officials said.
Yale and New Haven police departments have been working together and will continue to pursue any leads. The computer was stolen on the night of July 28 and was reported as missing the next morning. No Social Security, financial or insurance numbers were contained in the computer’s files.
The computer was owned by Yale and stolen from the office of a data analyst at the Yale School of Medicine. While access to the stolen laptop was protected by a password, the laptop was not encrypted.
Read more in the New Haven Register.
NBC Connecticut reports that Attorney General Blumenthal is investigating the incident:
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said his office is investigating to determine what caused the breach and whether state or federal laws have been violated.
“Yale Medical School is cooperating with my office — recognizing that it has a profound responsibility to safeguard sensitive health information, and must be accountable to approximately 1,000 individuals whose information may be at risk,” Blumenthal said. “My office has begun an investigation to identify the cause of the breach and assure ongoing protections for patients.”
Blumenthal said he will also seek privacy protections for individuals affected, and measures to ensure that similar breaches are prevented in the future.
Is he going to investigate every single breach or just high-profile entities that get breached?
At the time of this posting, I cannot find any notice on Yale’s web site about the breach.