Johns Hopkins loses patient, employee data

Johns Hopkins Hospital reported last week that it had lost backup tapes with information on more than 135,000 patients, employees and retirees. As is often the case with such slip-ups, the tapes were lost by an intermediary, a contractor working for the hospital and university. The data on one missing tape included patient names, sex, date of birth and other demographic information, but no clinical information, Social Security Numbers, addresses or financial information, minimizing identity theft issues for these folks. However, employees face significant exposure, as eight other missing payroll tapes included SSNs and even bank account information for current and former employees.  A hospital spokesman said the data on the tapes was not encrypted, the hospital is in the process of moving to encryption, making the risk of identity theft or data misuse "very, very low."

For more information on the data breach:
- read this Associated Press article

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