Laptop theft cause of Cedars-Sinai breach

Cedars-Sinai Health System is alerting at least 500 patients that their health information may be at risk following the theft of one of its laptops, reports SC Magazine.

In a notice—which does not cite the number of patients impacted—Cedars-Sinai officials wrote that “there is no indication of any actual or attempted unauthorized access to health information” nor that the laptop contained complete medical or billing records. Since the incident, remote access from the laptop has been terminated, according to the Los Angeles-based health system.

The theft occurred at the home of an employee, who was using the laptop for troubleshooting software used for clinical laboratory reporting. The laptop was among many items stolen from the home.

The laptop was password-protected, but did not contain additional encryption software, which is against Cedars-Sinai policy. “As a result, some information was potentially stored in temporary files on the laptop's hard drive at the time of the theft.” The local police investigation is ongoing and the laptop is not yet recovered, according to the notice.

Information at risk varied depending on the individual, but consisted in general of some combination of medical record number, patient identification number, lab testing information, treatment information and diagnostic information. A small percentage of the files also contained the patient's Social Security number or other personal information.

"Even a potential data security incident on a single computer, as has occurred here, is not acceptable to us. We apologize to the people affected by this incident, and have taken actions to prevent any reoccurrence,” David Blake, Cedars-Sinai's chief privacy officer, said in a statement.