In a press briefing last week, Roger Baker -- CIO of the Department of Veterans Affairs -- announced that VA will post on its website the security breach reports it delivers to Congress each month, Government Health IT reports.
VA Data Breaches
The majority of security and data breaches experienced by the department each year are not significant, Baker said.
VA reported to Congress that six laptops were missing or stolen in July, compared with 16 in June. Of those six, five were encrypted and one was used for reading bar codes designed to help administer correct medications and did not contain sensitive health information.
Eleven of the 16 laptops missing or stolen in June were encrypted.
Baker added that the number of overall security breaches within VA declined slightly from June (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 8/13).
VA also reported that between July 5 to Aug. 1, it lost two personal computers, 13 BlackBerry devices, and experienced 103 "mis-mailed" incidents and 90 "mis-handling" incidents (Montalbano, InformationWeek, 8/13).