By Associated Press
Washington, DC – The Department of Veterans Affairs this week will begin notifying thousands of individuals whose sensitive information may be on a portable hard drive missing and possibly stolen from the Birmingham V-A office. An employee at the Birmingham V-A Medical Center reported an external hard drive missing on January 22nd. The hard drive was used to back up information on the employee's office computer. It may have contained data from research projects the employee was working on.
An ongoing probe by the V-A and its Office of Inspector General has found that data files the employee was working with may have included sensitive V-A-related information on approximately 535-thousand individuals, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson says in a statement. The probe has also determined that information on approximately one-point-three (M) million non-V-A physicians -- both living and deceased -- could have been stored on the missing hard drive.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)