Stolen laptop results in theft of 100k patient records

A laptop containing the unencrypted personal records of Alere Home Monitoring customers was stolen from an employee's car.

How many victims? More than 100,000 patients.

What type of personal information? Full names, Social Security numbers, addresses and diagnoses of patients.

What was the response? Alere Home Monitoring, a provider of disease health management solutions, has contacted affected customers to offer one year of free credit monitoring.

Details: Doug Guarino, an Alere spokesman, said the company became aware of the breach around Oct. 1. The patient data was not encrypted, but the laptop was password protected. A police report has been filed, but the laptop has not been found.

Quote: “(W)e have no evidence that any of your information has been disclosed or misused as a result of this incident,” Alere told its customers

Source: www.news-press.com, The News-Press, “Alere Home Monitoring warns of data breach,” Nov. 9, 2012.