Sometimes items don’t show up in my news searches until much later. Here’s an item that was actually published in July in a Hong Kong publication, The Standard:
Hackers may have accessed up to 17,000 personal and clinical files kept by the Department of Health.
The department said last night the Immunisation Record System of its Clinical Information Management System had been hacked, and that its computer server had been immediately suspended.
The breach was discovered on Tuesday when the department’s electronic health record management team found some suspicious files in the server. Initial investigations revealed that the suspected files had been put on the server from July 10 to 11 after bypassing security. The hacker might have accessed about 17,000 files of clients in four clinical services.
The files involve records of family health, antenatal and dental services. The server previously received student name lists from primary schools before the School Immunisation Team visited those schools. But this information would not be permanently stored in this server.
“We suspect that such unauthorized access to the server may result in possible data leakage. Further investigations are ongoing,” a spokesman said.
So let’s see if there’s any follow-up or reports of misuse down the road.