In 2010, the servers that stored data from Columbia University, as well as the New York and Presbyterian hospitals, crashed, and data from approximately 6,800 patients became publicly available. After four years of legal proceedings, the judge issued a rather harsh sentence.
The heads of medical organizations responsible for storing data are now obliged to pay $ 4.8 million to victims. And this leak happened by a rather ridiculous coincidence of circumstances.
One of the doctors during work accidentally turned off the personal server responsible for data protection, and all the valuable information about patients immediately became public knowledge. This would not have happened if the administration of the university and the two hospitals had taken a closer look at the security system. But since they decided to save a lot on it, a similar embarrassment happened.
Of course, after the litigation, both hospitals made major changes both in their security system and in the confidentiality agreement, which each patient has to sign. Now in case of a leak of personal information into the network, it will be possible to refer to the rules, under which the patient has signed, they say, nothing can be done, this happens, and you were not against it from the very beginning.
Whatever it was, the victims will very soon receive their compensation, but this incident once again makes you wonder: is it necessary to store such important data as personal medical records about tests, medical examinations and diagnoses on servers that are connected to the global network ? And what do you think about the fact that more and more areas of our life are digitized and can easily fall into the wrong hands?
The article is based on materials .
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