40K Canadians Potentially Impacted By Lost Gov’t Employee Laptop

Exploit: Data Breach
Company: NWT Department of Health and Social Services
Industry: Government, Healthcare
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/stolen-laptop-nwt-security-details-ottawa-1.5024775

Last May, a government employee’s laptop containing thousands of personal files, including sensitive health information., was stolen out of a car. The theft resulted in a severe privacy breach that is estimated to affect up to 40,000 Canadian citizens. Officials have turned their eyes on inadequate privacy training as the primary issue stating that managers have been instructed to delete sensitive data after use. Next steps in remediation will now include a list of new privacy initiatives and protocol to be implemented by 2020, incurring large investments of time and money.

Over half of those affected could be at risk of having their names, dates of birth, health card numbers and diagnoses sold on the Dark Web or used further in cases of identity fraud.

Human error accounts for a large majority of data breaches. Even when they are unintentional, as in this case, the organization as a whole is scrutinized. What becomes an internal discussion turns into a public acknowledgement and further costs and time investments are unavoidable. Creating proper protocol for handling sensitive data and privacy initiatives is a basic necessity for all companies, further plans should include multiple layers of cyber security in order to properly safeguard the company’s data and its customers’.

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