Venyu Blog

You know, unless you really don’t value your customer data, using anything short of an online backup and recovery service provider to secure its transmission, including using a courier service to transport that data from point A to somewhere in Timbuktu, is never worth the chance it could be stolen — eh, misplaced.

Case in point: Just this week the Boston Globe reported computer files from South Shore Hospital that contain personal information for about 800,000 people may have been lost when they were shipped to a contractor to be destroyed, hospital officials announced.

The information was on back-up files headed for destruction because they were in a format the hospital said it no longer used and contained information on patients, employees, physicians, volunteers, donors, and other business partners associated with South Shore between Jan. 1, 1996, and Jan. 6 of this year.

According to the Globe, the files may have included names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, medical record numbers, patient numbers, health plan information, dates of service, diagnoses, treatments relating to hospital and home health care visits, and other personal information.  Moreover, the data was NOT encrypted.

South Shore said its backup computer files were shipped to a contractor for destruction on Feb. 26, and when the hospital failed to receive their certificates, (evidencing the job had been completed), the hospital contacted the company for answers. On June 17, it was informed that only a portion of the shipped material had been received and destroyed.

Foresight being 20-20, of course, none of this would have happened if South Shore Hospital had elected to use an online backup and recovery solution, like Venyu, to transmit, secure and ultimately perform data destruction remotely. In fact, encrypting data upon ingestion and transmitting it onto a secure server located in a best-of-class Tier IV secure facility ensures your data is not only never lost, but also able to be (if that’s what you need, that is), rapidly recovered. (For additional benefits revisit our March 30 blog posting here.)

The take-away from this announcement? Whether you’re a hospital serving patients or a small business helping customers, taking a proactive, common sense approach to potential data breaches trumps having to respond reactively to them every day of the week.