Patients’ information taken in hospital laptop theft

Rob Stringer

A hospital in South London has reported the theft of six laptops containing details of
20 000 patients.

The computers were taken from St George’s Hospital in Tooting earlier this month when thieves broke into a locked cabinet in a secure room.

A spokeswoman for the hospital said that although the patients’ names and hospital numbers were shown, information such as postcodes were encrypted.

“This will be of little consolation to the patients whose records have been stolen,” adds Carole Theriault, senior security consultant with Sophos. “It is vital that policies are implemented and enforced to ensure that no kind of confidential information is made vulnerable to theft. Sensitive data should be encrypted, or better yet, simply not stored on portable devices like laptops and blackberries."

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