Canadian Health Authority ‘Tearing’ Offices Apart For Missing Thumb Drive and Assigning 30 Workers for Notification
Healthcare and Public Health // Canada
A USB flash drive containing a spreadsheet of employees' personal information has gone missing at Eastern Health.
The USB drive was last used on June 17 in an office within the human resources department of Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority. It was reported missing two days later.
Eastern Health CEO David Diamond says the authority has spent the last few days searching for the drive, tearing apart their offices.
It is believed the device is lost, not stolen.
Following the breach, Eastern Health said it plans to "upgrade its anti-virus platform so that USB drives will be automatically encrypted before use."
Diamond said 30 workers have been tasked to work full-time to make notification calls to certain affected employees.
Of the 9,000 people whose information was on the flash drive, 3,300 staff with last names starting with letters P-Z had social insurance numbers listed in the spreadsheet.
The remaining 5,700 employees had their names and employee numbers breached.