K. Min Yi, M.D., a surgeon in San Jose, California, reports that patient data were on an external hard drive stolen during an office burglary on Memorial Day Weekend in 2013. The backup drive was in a locked drawer at the time of the burglary.
A copy of her notification letter has just been posted to California Attorney General’s website, but since the template letter is not dated, it’s not clear when the 4,676 patients who had data on the backup drive were notified of the breach, or if they are first being notified now.
Unfortunately, it appears that there was a lot of medical information in the patients’ records on that drive as well as contact information, date of birth, and insurance information. While patients’ Social Security numbers were not involved, the Social Security numbers of those responsible for payment of patient accounts may have been exposed.
This breach does not appear on HHS’s breach tool, which raises a whole host of other questions, beginning with “Why not?”
Update: The breach was added to HHS’s breach tool on February 11, but that doesn’t tell us when it was first reported to HHS.
Ahhh yes.. yet another breach not on the breach tool. They still need to update mine. Meanwhile verizon has the correct information in their database.
git clone https://github.com/vz-risk/VCDB
cd VCDB/data/json
grep -r “stringtosearchfor” *
Fun way to look.
I would expect their database – and DataLossDB.org – to have more accurate info than HHS’s breach tool, as both dbases use AG sites, they do update, and both follow this blog and use the info I provide. 🙂