Business
Aetna reports privacy breach
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted May 15, 2006
Aetna Inc. announced April 26 that a laptop containing the personal information of approximately 38,000 members was stolen from an employee's car in a public parking lot in Connecticut.
The laptop, stolen in mid-April, contained the names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and other personal data of employees of two unidentified corporate clients, the health plan said. Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna has notified and informed affected members that it will pay for credit monitoring services for them. At press time, there was no indication that their data had been misused, the plan said.
The information stored in the stolen laptop was password-protected. But Aetna's employees did not follow corporate policies for protecting confidential data, Aetna president Ronald A. Williams said in a statement posted on the company's Web site. "In light of this, we are augmenting our efforts to ensure employee compliance with all business conduct policies, including data security," he said.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2006/05/15/bibf0515.htm.
