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"Nearly every practicing doctor in the United States is being warned that their identities might have been stolen when the laptop of an employee of an insurance trade group was snagged from a car in Chicago. The laptop contained business and personal information such as Social Security numbers, addresses and certain identification numbers on the laptop of an employee from the Chicago-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a trade group for the nation's Blue Cross health insurance plans. The association confirmed that an employee "broke protocol and transferred to a personal laptop" information that was stolen in late August. No patient information was on the database, and so far, no doctor has reported a security breach. However, nearly 20 percent of the doctors listed in the database have their Social Security numbers as their medical-care provider identification, putting these health professionals at risk for identity theft, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune."

At first glance, Chicago's latest crime-fighting strategy seems to be plucked from a Hollywood screenplay. Someone sees a thief dipping into a Salvation Army kettle in a crowd of shoppers on State Street and dials 911 from a cellphone. Within seconds, a video image of the caller's location is beamed onto a dispatcher's computer screen. An officer arrives and by police radio is directed to the suspect, whose description and precise location are conveyed by the dispatcher watching the video, leading to a quick arrest. That chain of events actually happened in the Loop in December, said Ray Orozco, the executive director of the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications. "We can now immediately take a look at the crime scene if the 911 caller is in a location within 150 feet of one of our surveillance cameras, even before the first responders arrive," Mr. Orozco said. The technology, a computer-aided dispatch system, was paid for with a $6 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security. It has been in use since a trial run in December. "One of the best tools any big city can have is visual indicators like cameras, which can help save lives," Mr. Orozco said. In addition to the city's camera network, Mr. Orozco said, the new system can also connect to cameras at private sites like tourist attractions, office buildings and university campuses. Twenty private companies have agreed to take part in the program, a spokeswoman for Mr. Orozco said, and 17 more are expected to be added soon. Citing security concerns, the city would not say how many cameras were in the system. Mayor Richard M. Daley said this week that the integrated camera network would enhance regional security as well as fight street crime. Still, opponents of Mr. Daley's use of public surveillance cameras described the new system as a potential Big Brother intrusion on privacy rights. "If a 911 caller reports that someone left a backpack on the sidewalk, wil

As health care providers determine how they will take advantage of the $19 billion allocated in the stimulus package to help jumpstart advances in health information technology (HIT), consumer appetite for electronic health records (EHRs), online tools and services is also growing, according to the results of the 2009 Deloitte Survey of Health Care Consumers (www.deloitte.com/us/2009consumersurvey). While only 9 percent of consumers surveyed have an electronic personal health record (PHR), 42 percent are interested in establishing PHRs connected online to their physicians. Fifty-five percent want the ability to communicate with their doctor via email to exchange health information and get answers to questions. Fifty-seven percent reported they'd be interested in scheduling appointments, buying prescriptions and completing other transactions online if their information is protected. Technologies that can facilitate consumer transactions with providers and health plans, like integrated billing systems that make bill payment faster and more convenient, are also appealing to nearly half (47 percent) of consumers surveyed. The survey of more than 4,000 U.S. consumers 18 and over was released today at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference held in Chicago. It is the second annual study examining health care consumers' attitudes, behaviors and unmet needs conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions offering health care industry leaders and policymakers a timely look at how health care consumerism is evolving. "Consumers are increasingly embracing innovations that enhance self-care, convenience, personalization and control of personal health information," said Paul H. Keckley, Ph.D., executive director, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. "Consumers want a bigger say in their health care decisions. Consumer demand for HIT and its potential impact on reforming the system has never been stronger." Despite strong con

A nationwide ATM heist late last year netted thieves $9 million in cash in one day, according to published reports. The coordinated attack stemmed from a computer intrusion at payment processor RBS WorldPay. Atlanta-based RBS WorldPay announced on Dec. 23 that hackers had broken into its database and made off with personal and financial data on 1.5 million customers of its payroll cards business. Some companies use payroll cards in lieu of paychecks by depositing employee salaries or hourly wages directly into payroll card accounts, which can then be used as debit cards at ATMs. RBS said that thieves also might also have accessed Social Security numbers of 1.1 million customers. New York's Fox 5 cites FBI sources as saying that thieves used the stolen payroll cards recently to withdraw $9 million from ATMs from 49 cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Montreal, Moscow, and Hong Kong. Steve Lazarus, a spokesman for the FBI's Atlanta field office, said the withdrawals were carried out by a small army of so-called "cashers," or people who work with cyber thieves and fabricated cards to pull money out of compromised accounts. From the Fox piece: "Shortly after midnight Eastern Time on November 8, the FBI believes that dozens of the so-called cashers were used in a coordinated attack of ATM machines around the world."

IT practices such as identity management, email and URL filtering, virus scanning and electronic monitoring of employees can get companies that do business globally into a heap of trouble if deployed without an understanding of global data privacy laws. The warning was one of several alarms raised in a presentation on global privacy best practices by Gartner Inc. analysts Arabella Hallawell and Carsten Casper at the recent Gartner Risk Management and Compliance Summit in Chicago. Always a thorny issue, the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) is made more complicated in a world where there is limited agreement on how best to do that. According to the Gartner analysts, the world is divided into three parts when it comes to data privacy laws: countries with strong, moderate or inadequate legislation. The European Union, under the European Union Directive on Data Protection, possesses the strongest privacy regulations, followed by Canada and Argentina; Australia, Japan and South Africa have moderate to strong, recent legislation; laws in China, India and the Philippines are the least effective or laxly enforced. The United States has the dubious distinction of occupying two categories -- the strong column, due to the 45 state breach notification laws on the books, and the weak column, because of the lack of a federal law. Even among the three categories, nuances abound. Under the European Union Directive, member countries enact their own principles into legislation, and some laws (like Italy's) are more stringent than the directive's standards. Russia's very recent law is modeled after the strong EU laws, but how it will be enforced remains questionable. And in the U.S., state breach notification laws vary, with Nevada and Massachusetts proposing the most prescriptive data privacy legislation to date.

Recent hacking attacks on Sony Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. grabbed headlines. What happened at City Newsstand Inc. last year did not. Unbeknownst to owner Joe Angelastri, cyber thieves planted a software program on the cash registers at his two Chicago-area magazine shops that sent customer credit-card numbers to Russia. MasterCard Inc. demanded an investigation, at Mr. Angelastri's expense, and the whole ordeal left him out about $22,000.