Another case of ‘lost’ data

This is yet another case of personal sloppiness affecting hundreds of thousands of adults and children.

This time the National Health Service has admitted to losing data collected on patients from nine hospitals in England.

The usual line was given to the affected individuals that there is no evidence data has fallen into the wrong hands. But once again, no one knows for certain because the data is missing.

In one case a disk failed to arrive at an east London Hospital. My first question, how was the disk sent? By private courier or daily mail?

Another case involves data on patients treated 40 years ago. They are all deceased and you may think no big deal, nothing can happen to them. But you would be wrong. Professional criminals would love to get their valid social security numbers and use them.

One hospital reported two breaches which means there are actually 10 new cases.

Law officials are of course promising to take action against anyone who failed their responsibilities under data protection laws. But the underlying problem of a lackadaisical effort at data protection again goes unmentioned. The individuals involved became derelict in their duty. The data needs to be transmitted using more secure methods. Privacy needs to be taken more seriously.

The whole culture of data management needs to be addressed. Rules are in place as required by laws but the individuals who are governed by them take shortcuts to make their personal lives easier. Sometimes it becomes a nuisance to take that extra precautionary step. We have all been faced with this situation. Maybe we will miss some deadline if we follow the rules to the letter so we circumvent one step.

Individuals set themselves up for misfortune by not practicing effective secure routines. If any of these same individuals who are tasked with protecting other peoples data discovered their own data had been compromised by someone not taking the rules seriously I am certain they would be concerned.

When we care for other people we are actually caring for ourselves. It is a simple thought to keep in mind as we go about our daily business. We need to care for other peoples data as if it were our own. If people really cared we would need rules to tell us to do so.