A desktop PC containing the personal information of up to 36,000
U.S. military veterans has gone missing from U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA) subcontractor Unisys
Corp., the VA announced.
The PC may have contained VA patients' names, addresses, Social
Security Numbers, dates of birth, insurance carriers and billing
information, dates of military service, and claims data that may
include some medical information, the VA said.
Unisys notified the VA on Thursday that the computer was missing
from the subcontractor's Reston, Virginia, offices.
The VA immediately dispatched a team to Unisys to assist in the
search for computer and to help determine what information it held,
the VA said in a press release.
The announcement comes after the VA said in late May that a
laptop and hard drive containing the personal data of 26.5 million
veterans and their spouses was stolen from a VA analysts' home.
Police recovered the laptop and hard drive in
late June, but the theft set off a series of hearings in the U.S.
Congress about the VA's management and IT organization, with
several lawmakers calling for an overhaul of the VA's decentralized
IT reporting structure.
On Saturday, Montgomery County, Maryland, police announced they
had arrested two Maryland men for the theft of the laptop and hard
drive.
In the Unisys case, the VA believes the missing personal records
belong to people who received treatment at the VA's two
Pennsylvania medical centres during the past four years.
The PC appears to have contained personal information for about
5,000 patients treated at Philadelphia, about 11,000 patients
treated at Pittsburgh, and it may have also contained information
from another 20,000 people treated at the VA's Pittsburgh medical
center.
The PC appears to have also contained information on about 2,000
deceased patients, the VA said.
The VA is working with Unisys to offer credit monitoring and
individual notifications to potential victims, the VA said.
"VA is making progress to reform its information technology and
cybersecurity procedures, but this report of a missing computer at
a subcontractor's secure building underscores the complexity of the
work ahead as we establish VA as a leader in data and information
security," VA Secretary R. James Nicholson said in a
statement.
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