In a story that makes you scratch your head, a missing CD with over 300,000 names of New Yorkers with developmental and other health issues has been missing for almost a month.
We have not been able to locate within our Early Intervention program unit one disc out of two discs that we received from New York City,” DOH spokeswoman Claudia Hutton said.”At this point, we have no reason to believe they’ve left the building.”
The contents of the disk were encrypted but unfortunately the encryption password may have been written on the outside of the disk.
Adding to concern is the fear that the disc’s password may be written on the outside, although Hutton said the disc is encrypted and could not be read without advanced technical skill.Hutton conceded that putting the password on the disc was not a good idea and amounted to “sloppy housekeeping.”
Workers at the DOH first discovered the disc was missing around March 20 when they realized it wasn’t where it was supposed to be: in a locked cabinet inside a locked room, said Hutton, in response to a reporter’s inquiry.
The two CDs had been sent by overnight delivery service from New York City and were logged in at Corning Tower.
Once the DOH realized one of the discs was missing, security experts began a search, even instructing workers to sift through piles of papers and desk drawers.
Hutton said the disc may have been accidentally shredded or may still be somewhere in the building. She said the New York City DOH was notified last week.
They say there is no need to notify the patients of the breach but the details seem sketchy.
She said the DOH won’t have to notify people whose names are on the disc because it doesn’t contain diagnoses or other medical information that would be covered by federal privacy laws.
Along with the names and addresses, the disc contains codes that relate to the services the individuals received, Hutton said.
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