Meridian Healthcare employee victim of laptop theft
It just takes one quick grab to steal a laptop or mobile. Users make it easy for thieves by putting such stuff out in the open in a restaurant, in an outside pocket of a backpack or leaving windows open at night.
One such incident took place recently in Meridian.
The incident
According to Asbury Park police Detective Capt. Anthony Salerno the theft occurred between 2 and 7 a.m. June 25.
It appears that a 55-year-old woman had left a window open at her home on Locust Drive before going to bed. In the morning she found that the screen had been cut and the window had been opened more. Her house was burgled and items taken were her work laptop computer and seven thumb drives containing financial documents for her employer, Meridian Health. The heist also included second laptop owned by the woman, two credit cards, a 19-inch television set and a bicycle. The items were around $5,000.
The woman’s laptop contained personal information of Meridian health care’s employees. There is no indication that any of the employee information was accessed. Probably identity theft was not the thief’s intention.
As to how many employees are affected is still not known. The police are also trying to find out whether the Asbury Park woman was authorized to bring the computer equipment home. The woman’s designation or profile in the company is also not known.
Laptop theft part of Cybercrime
Cyber-crime is defined as an intentional crashing of the servers, the stealing of important data, or the release of a virus or other malicious software.
Cyber criminals are getting more creative and big and small companies are in a frenzy to deploy new tools and procedures to deal with these new attacks
Security Measures taken by Meridian Healthcare
Meridian is the parent company of Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, Ocean Medical Center in Brick, Southern Ocean Medical Center in Stafford and Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel. Its partner companies include home health services and rehabilitation centers.
A national identity theft consulting company, appointed by Meridian Healthcare, is notifying the employees and providing them with comprehensive identity theft protection at Meridian’s expense for three years.
Learning from the incident, Meridian leaders are reforming security policies by offering continued protection of team members’ personal identification information in-house as well as hiring a security consultant to conduct an independent audit of Meridian’s policies and procedures.
Hire Alertsec
This incident stresses the need for data protection applications. The need of a Data encryption software and recovery software is felt by big and small companies in today’s vulnerable data world. The threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. Certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model.
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With the continued growth of mobile computing and of data security laws, every day companies are investing more an more time and dollars into security systems. Unfortunately, a common failing of these laptop security measures is the fact that they are heavily reliant on the diligent action of laptop-using employees to remain effective. Thus, even after this investment of time and money – a security breach occurs because of the weakest link – the person behind the keyboard.
Traditionally, organizations have used corporate firewalls and other intrusion detection systems to protect corporate networks from potentially compromised endpoints. However, in today’s laptop-dominated environment, endpoint security strategies place the responsibility for security on the device itself and not on the employees. This next generation of security strategy is already common in the form of anti-spam filters, desktop level firewalls and anti-virus software programs.
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