Grassley, Wyden Probe Data Breach that Exposed 1.5 Million Organ Transplant Patients’ Sensitive Data

AJ Taylor reports:

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are holding the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) accountable after a data breach allowed UNOS system users unauthorized access to over a million sensitive patient records. This technology breakdown is the latest in a string of failures at UNOS, which for 40 years has held the sole government contract to manage the U.S. organ transplant system. Grassley and Wyden, the former and current chairmen, respectively, of the Senate Finance Committee, last year authored a historic law that breaks up the organ transplant contract and encourages the most competent contractors in the field to manage the nation’s organ system.

“Whether the exposed data was accessed by authorized users only or not, this mishandling error is another example of UNOS’s failure to operate the critical technology supporting the OPTN,” the senators wrote.“Given the large amount of sensitive data UNOS stores and collects on past and present patients, it is imperative that data breaches do not happen again.”