01-10-2011, 07:46 AM
(Reuters) - A massive data breach, in which the personal and medical records of millions of military patients and their families were compromised, happened when the records were stolen out of a data contractor's car in San Antonio, officials told Reuters on Thursday.
The information for some 4.6 million active and retired military personnel, as well as their families, was on back up-tapes from an electronic health care record used to capture and preserve patient data from 1992 through September 7 of this year, according to Science Applications International Corp (SAIC).
The families used the federal government's TRICARE health provider. SAIC is the suburban Washington firm that handles military health provider TRICARE's data.
The tapes went missing on September 14 when they were "among items stolen from an employee's car in San Antonio," SAIC spokesman Vernon Guidry told Reuters.
They were in the car, he said, because they were "being transferred from one federal facility to another in compliance with the terms of their contract."
He said there's no indication the car thief was after the tapes or even knew what they were.
SAIC is working with San Antonio police and a private investigator to recover the tapes, Guidry said.
After announcing the breach on Thursday, SAIC officials scrambled to reassure patients the "risk of harm to patients is judged to be low, despite the data elements involved."
"Retrieving the data on the tapes would require knowledge of and access to specific hardware and software and knowledge of the system and data structure," SAIC said in a statement released Thursday.
More here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/2...JG20110929
The information for some 4.6 million active and retired military personnel, as well as their families, was on back up-tapes from an electronic health care record used to capture and preserve patient data from 1992 through September 7 of this year, according to Science Applications International Corp (SAIC).
The families used the federal government's TRICARE health provider. SAIC is the suburban Washington firm that handles military health provider TRICARE's data.
The tapes went missing on September 14 when they were "among items stolen from an employee's car in San Antonio," SAIC spokesman Vernon Guidry told Reuters.
They were in the car, he said, because they were "being transferred from one federal facility to another in compliance with the terms of their contract."
He said there's no indication the car thief was after the tapes or even knew what they were.
SAIC is working with San Antonio police and a private investigator to recover the tapes, Guidry said.
After announcing the breach on Thursday, SAIC officials scrambled to reassure patients the "risk of harm to patients is judged to be low, despite the data elements involved."
"Retrieving the data on the tapes would require knowledge of and access to specific hardware and software and knowledge of the system and data structure," SAIC said in a statement released Thursday.
More here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/2...JG20110929
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