http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9176883/P2P_networks_a_treasure_trove_of_leaked_health_care_data_study_finds By Jaikumar Vijayan Computerworld May 17, 2010 Nearly eight months after new rules were enacted requiring stronger protection of health care information, organizations are still leaking such data on file-sharing networks, a study by Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business has found. In a research paper to be presented at an IEEE security symposium Tuesday, a Dartmouth College professor Eric Johnson will describe how university researchers discovered thousands of documents containing sensitive patient information on popular peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. One of the more than 3,000 files discovered by the researchers was a spreadsheet containing insurance details, personally identifying information, physician names and diagnosis codes on more than 28,000 individuals. Another document contained similar data on more than 7,000 individuals. Many of the documents contained sensitive patient communications, treatment data, medical diagnoses and psychiatric evaluations. At least five files contained enough information to be classified as a major breach under current health-care breach notification rules. While some of the documents appear to have been leaked before the Obama administration's Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was enacted, many appear to be fairly recent. A previous study by Dartmouth in 2008 also unearthed files containing health-care data floating on P2P networks, such as Limewire, eDonkey and BearShare. Among the documents found in that study was one containing 350MB of patient data for a group of anesthesiologists and another on patients at an AIDS clinic in Chicago. [...] _______________________________________________ Best Selling Security Books and More! Shop InfoSec News http://www.shopinfosecnews.org/Received on Mon May 17 2010 - 22:36:28 PDT
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