1.5 million insurance customers' personal data lost in breach

The health, personal, and financial information of about 1.5 million customers of Health Net of the Northeast Inc. was reported missing late last week, six months after the drive containing the data was lost.
11/23/2009 6:00:00 AM By: Lucas Mearian

A hard drive with seven years' worth of personal financial and medical information on about 1.5 million customers of Health Net of the Northeast Inc. was reported missing to state officials yesterday -- six months after the drive went missing.

Along with medical records, the hard drive contains names, addresses and Social Security numbers of Health Net customers from Arizona, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Connecticut has data breach laws requiring individuals be notified of the loss of their personal data without reasonable delay.

The data loss, which occurred in May, was only reported by the insurance company to the Connecticut state attorney general's office and the Department of Insurance yesterday. The device containing the data was an external, portable hard drive. The data had not been encrypted.

Health Net, based in Shelton, Conn., had no information about the data breach on its Web site.

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