Eastern Health has experienced a breach of privacy this week. A USB flash drive was discovered missing, and it contains a spreadsheet listing the names names, employee numbers, and social insurance numbers of about 3,300 employees.
“On behalf of Eastern Health, I want to publicly apologize to our employees whose personal information was on the missing flash drive,” says David Diamond, President and CEO of Eastern Health. “We take all breaches of privacy very seriously and are committed to exploring ways to further strengthen our privacy practices surrounding safe security measures and the storage of information on portable devices.”
An internal investigation has been conducted, but the missing flash drive has not yet been found. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner has also been notified and has begun a formal investigation. So far, there is no evidence to suggest that the information on the USB drive has been used for fraudulent purposes.
Employees who names were on the flash drive are currently being advised. As a precautionary measure, Eastern Health is providing employees with some information they can use to help protect themselves against identify theft. Eastern Health also plans to upgrade its anti-virus platform so that USB drives will be automatically encrypted before use. This measure would force non-encrypted sticks to go through an encryption process before they could be used on Eastern Health computers.
Just read the June 2015 issue - the food one. I’m not a foodie and anticipated a. Page-turning experience but was fascinated by your Editor’s Note page and Ed Riche’s witty observations (it’s not just Chinese restaurants in NLFD that are stuck in the 70s!). I missed the name of the stand-in editor while ‘Chad ran off ‘To France and Spain’ (I assume it’s Chris Shortall) but found the article extremely interesting and eye-opening; a world not seen by the public often and a key feature of NLFD history: customs brokerages and import/export agents. A ‘fancy food and tea emporium (in) the old Bianca’s restaurant space’ called Delgado’s sounds like a great idea! I’ve always loved Tunnock’s and Snowballs and loved the fact that they seem to be unique at least in their ubiquity in NFLD. The article on a History of Local Food Vendors fills in a void in public knowledge and shows what we once were and what we’ve given up in a mistaken, head-long rush to ape the mainland when other places didn’t actually abandon every local shop and grocer IN THE 70s!
well said!