If you live in Alberta, Canada, you may be in for a rather troubling letter from Alberta Health Services.  The agency recently acknowledged that a virus which infected their systems may have stolen thousands of personal health records.

Alberta Health Services examined all their logs and compiled a list of 11,582 people whose medical records may have been stolen between May 14 and May 29. Those people are going to get a horrible letter in the mail, informing them that their personal health records may not be so personal anymore.

Bill Trasford, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Alberta Health Services told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that, "[the virus] was new and previously unknown to the AHS anti-virus software vendors."  That explains how the virus managed to infect the entire network and gain access to so many confidential records.

I have only been using SmartSwipe for about a year and I am informed enough to know that any credit cards I used to shop online prior to that are likely on a criminal's hard drive.  That is bad enough, but Doctor-patient confidentiality is a cornerstone of our medical system, in fact, it is a cornerstone of our basic set of freedoms.  That cornerstone was effectively removed by an information security breach.  Frankly, I cannot even begin to imagine what it would feel like to read a letter that told me that my personal medical records might be sitting on a criminal's hard drive.

The worst thing though is that this sad event only validates what experts have been saying about anti-virus software for years.  Anti-virus software is only reactive and cannot protect you if the threat on your computer(s) has never been seen before.  Daniel McCann talked about this here.  And the good people at Symantec even talked about this sad fact here.

Sadly, this is the second recent case in which many medical records have been stolen in Alberta.  In June, two laptops were stolen from a research lab.  These laptops contained confidential medical information on 250,000 people.

Please keep our medical records safe.