Once again, the most simple data breaches involve the stealing of data on an external device that is off-site. Without being too snarky — or dare we say judgmental — how does someone have a device in their car that contains personal information of 15,000 people?? This is exactly what happened to Kaiser Permanente when a storage device with personal information for about 15,500 members in Northern California was stolen from an employee’s car last month. Really? Someone would have this type of device containing this data just sitting in their car??

Fortunately, according to Kaiser Permanente, the device did not include Social Security numbers or any other financial data. And, there is no evidence that the data has been used inappropriately, Kaiser claims. We often think about the need for networking and software security applications to protect personal information from hackers, but a real issue is just plain incompetence when it comes to handing external devices. The way to address this issue is to train IT departments (assuming it was stolen from an IT guy) to never remove these types of devices from the office. Better yet, why not lock this device up in a safe? Sometimes the most simple of solutions are the most effective.

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