California not-for-profit Community Catalysts of California, Inc. recently mentioned that a flash drive containing certain client information was stolen from an employee’s residence. The affected information includes names, addresses, diagnoses, dates of birth, ages, and gender and/or telephone numbers for certain current and former clients. However, driver’s license information, state identification
Not-for-profit Community suffers data breach
, health insurance or financial account numbers were not included.
“We take the privacy and security of the information in our possession very seriously and we deeply regret these circumstances and are committed to keeping impacted individuals informed,” read a Community Catalysts statement.
Physical safeguards and administrative safeguards are essential to keep patient information safe and secure.
Community Catalysts “provides services and advocacy for people with disabilities and Veterans.” This includes assistance in several areas, such as mental health support, recreation, client advocacy, education, healthcare support, housing, and employment.
“We have taken steps to prevent this type of event from happening again, including retraining our employees on using encrypted device, as required by our company policy,” Community Catalysts explained. “We are also reviewing our data retention practices to ensure that we are not retaining any documents longer than necessary in order to provide services to our clients.
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