Health Net healthcare data breach affects1.5 million

What's happening: Health Net announced that it is investigating a healthcare data security breach that resulted in the loss of patient data, affecting 1.5 million customers.The Woodland Hills, Calif.-based managed healthcare provider said the lost files, a mixture of medical data, Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information, were collected over the past seven years and contained on a portable external hard drive, which was lost six months ago. The company said the healthcare data was not encrypted containing data on 446,000 Connecticut patients.

What it means: This loss illustrates some of the challenges of securely managing sensitive information. Who — if anyone — authorized sensitive information to be stored on a portable—easy-to-lose—hard drive? Why was the drive not encrypted? Why did it take the company 6 months to to notify anyone? What will this cost them? What will they learn from it?

What to do: Stay vigilant. Every business is at risk that what happened to Health Net can happen to it.

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Health Net healthcare data breach affects1.5 million