The Cost of Data
A good friend of the Symagio team is an EMT/Paramedic/Firefighter superstar down in North Carolina, and we recently spoke to him about some interesting developments in our field of data backup. A new lawsuit filed in the healthcare industry sent ripples hundreds of miles away to small-town Emergency Medical Services departments.
A couple of weeks ago a number of individuals filed a suit against Sistsers of Saint Francis Health Services for not only exposing vital patient data, but also failing to notify these patients of the serious breach of their data. According to the article in IndyStar, the breach of data was caused by a number CDs containing vital patients records being returned to a store! Although it seems to be a careless mistake, with so much data around, these things are bound to happen unless certain elementary precautions are taken.
Over 260,000 patients records were put at risk. And with a potential penalty of $5000 per individual record - we’re talking about potential penalties in the billions. And no, we checked out arithmetic: the penalty could be over $1 billion.
What surprised us wasn’t so much the story itself, nor the enormous, bankruptcy-inducing penalties they face - we run across these stories everyday. Rather, it was that the ramifications were felt as far as away as a small-town Emergency Medical Services Department in North Carolina. We’re taking this as a good sign that people all across the country are understanding the need to tirelessly protect your data.
You can no longer say you cannot afford to securely and confidently backup your data - with such lawsuits happening more often, you simply cannot afford not to. When faced with the choices of many backup solutions today, it is certainly worth going with someone you can trust.
Technorati Tags: Data, Data Backup, Online, HIPAA, Compliance
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