Health Net Loses Over 1.5 Million Patient Records on Hard Drive
1.5 million Health Net customers’ personal and medical information is at risk after a hard drive was lost six months ago. The lost hard drive was first reported last week, according to state and Health Net officials. At least 446,000 of the customers include Connecticut residents. Residents of Arizona, New Jersey and New York are also included in the data contained on the hard drive.
The Connecticut Attorney General’s Office and Connecticut of Insurance was informed by Health Net of the data loss. The number of customers and patients affected by the lost ard drive that contained medical records and personal data. The lost hard drive is beleived to be an external portable hard drive and contained Social Security numbers in addition to medical records.
To date, Health Net has not been able to locate the hard drive. The data were compressed, but not encrypted. The information is formatted as images and requires a special computer program to be read, state and company officials said. Health Net plans to send out breach notification letters to its customers notifying them of the data loss.