Following a break-in at a county health contractor's office that led to the theft of computers containing personal information about more than 342,000 patients, Los Angeles County supervisors moved to tighten protocols for protecting data. <\/p>\n
The county already requires that workers' laptops be encrypted. The supervisors voted Tuesday to extend that policy to also encrypt all county departments computer workstation hard drives. <\/p>\n
They also asked that county staff members develop a plan to require \"all County-contracted agencies that exchange personally identifiable information and protected health information data with the County\" to encrypt sensitive information on their computers as a condition of their contracts. <\/p>\n
In February, eight computers were taken from the Torrance office ofSutherland Healthcare Solutions, a company that handles medical billing and collections for the county. <\/p>\n
Lisa Richardson, spokeswoman for Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who proposed the new security protocols, said the Sutherland incident \"alerted us to some necessary security measures.\"<\/p>\n
Torrance police are investigating the break-in, along with theLos Angeles County district attorney's cybercrime team and the U.S. Secret Service, which also investigates computer crimes. <\/p>\n
Sutherland has offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the return of the stolen equipment or the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the theft. <\/p>\n
The company, via a public relations firm, released images of a suspect captured by cameras. The suspect shown on film appeared to be ablack man of \"unknown age and height with a thick build.\" He was wearing gloves, a dark sweatshirt and dark hat with white insignias, gray or blue jeans and bright blue athletic shoes. He also had an earring in his left ear and a large watch on his left wrist. <\/p>\n
At least three lawsuits have been filed against the county and Sutherland over the incident, alleging, among other things, that the company failed to encrypt the data stored on the computers. <\/p>\n
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