Tech & Biz

20000 patient records disappear in hospital laptop theft

by Broken Simulacra | June 20, 2008 at 05:00 am

270 views | 30 Recommendations | 4 comments

Around 20000 confidential patient records have gone missing after thieves stole six laptops from St George's Hospital in the UK. According to hospital Chief Executive, David Astley, the laptops were stored in a locked filing cabinet which the thieves forced open. This must've been suprising for staff as Mr Astley bizarrely added that "nobody expects thieves to break into locked drawers".

The Register reports that although the records were password protected, this can be circumvented by restarting the laptops with a different operating system.

More details at The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/18/tooting_hospital_data_theft_a_lula/

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Rob Walker

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 05:57 on June 20th, 2008

Broken Simulacra, I like this story. It's good stuff.

generaldecay

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 06:52 on June 20th, 2008

Broken Simulacra, yes, I heard this yesterday. There were many apologies about keeping data on laptops and the insecurity of such measures etc., but as usual, it's all a little too late!

Broken Simulacra

at 20:26 on June 20th, 2008

I wonder if this were an inside job, given that this seems to be a large hospital and there would be several admin areas with filing cabinets and the like - how would the thieves have known which cabinet to target?