On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 2:33 PM, PeterK <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Data Breach Exposes Millions Of TRICARE Patients - San Antonio & Texas News
> Story - KSAT San Antonio
> on Sept. 14, 2011, Science Applications International Corporation reported
> a
> data breach involving personally identifiable and protected health
> information impacting an estimated 4.9 million military clinic and hospital
> patients.The information was contained on backup tapes from an electronic
> health care record used in the military health system to capture patient
> data from 1992 through Sept. 7 2011.
>
>
My question is if data was lost that covered that wide a span of time (19
YEARS) how much data was it? Data on 4.9 million patients that spans that
long a period of time STORED ON TAPE had to involve a LOT OF TAPES... it's
not the same as GBs of data stored on DVDs, tapes have a rather limited
capacity, even if the data is compressed.

Also WHY did "backup tapes" include data this old?  I'm thinking maybe the
article misspoke and it meant ARCHIVE tapes- backups are supposed to be used
for reconstituting data on a "live" system in the event of a failure or
catastrophic loss, NOT for storage of infrequently accessed data, like 19
year old medial data.  Even so, it's hard to fathom why tapes related to
this breadth of data would be together.

Larry

-- 
*Lawrence J. Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972*

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