California Health Officials Apologize for Data Breach and Top 10 Data Breaches and Blunders of 2009

We just came across a story about the California’s Department of Health Care Services, and how it is apologizing to nearly 50,000 Medi-Cal recipients whose Social Security numbers were disclosed on the outside of envelopes. Yesterday, the department said that it was immediately notifying the affected beneficiaries, whose Social Security numbers were inadvertently included on mailing address labels created by a vendor. Nice to see the State of California step up that quickly and accept accountability. And, it reinforces that human error — not malicious intent by an outside party — is often the cause of data breaches.

In other Data Breach news, we came across this article by eSecurity Planet that highlights the top 10 data breaches and security blunders of 2009. Of course all the usual suspects made the list, like HealthNet, the National Archives and more. Our big question to the author of the article is: how did you edit it down to only 10?