University of Miami Breach

Who Breached: University of Miami
Number Affected: 2.1 million
Information breached: Social Security Numbers, some financial data
How: laptop

The University of Miami has lost a case of computer tapes containing the confidential information of 2.1 million patients. The case was stolen from a van used by a private off-site storage company.

Anyone who was a patient of a University of Miami physician since 1999 has been affected by the breach. The University will be notifying only those customers whose financial data may have been included (credit card or other billing information), which affects 47,000 patients. The data included Social Security Numbers or health information in all instances, so it’s not clear why the breach notification is being restricted.

The University of Miami hired an security expert from Terremark Worldwide to determine if the data on similar tapes could be accessed. The expert believes, after a week of trying, that the proprietary compression and encoding would make the data difficult to access.

More information from the University of Miami about this breach can be found here.

Other sizable data breaches this week:

• Central Collection Bureau - 700,000 affected after computer server stolen
• Boots Dental Plan in the UK – 34,000 affected after data tapes stolen from a courier car
• Connecticut State University System - 3,400 affected after laptop stolen
• LendingTree – unknown number affected, three lending companies being sued for the breach
• Bank of Ireland – 10,000 affected in breach the result of 4 laptops stolen last year

Via attrition.org, miami herald Tags: data breach, breach, security breach, um, university of miami, financial data, identity theft, it security, offsite storage, data tapes, data backup