The amount of health information employers have on their workers and their families can be slightly startling. But it becomes a major issue when hackers get access and start releasing documents publicly, and Sony Corp. is now seeing the results of such a disaster (as if they haven’t had enough already).
The hackers (called Guardians of Peace) have been releasing stolen documents, including salary information and confidential e-mails, from the company’s Culver City, California-based unit Sony Pictures every few days since November 25. This has already been big news, but now with health records of more than three dozen employees, the breach of privacy has hit a new level.
An internal probe is being conducted at Sony and it looks like the hackers are actually known as DarkSeoul, which is believed to be a group from North Korea, according to media reports.
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An example of a leaked document was a memo sent from a human resources executive, addressed to the company’s benefits committee. It disclosed details on an employee’s child with special needs, including the diagnosis and the type of treatment the child was receiving. The memo pointed out the employee’s appeal of thousands of dollars in medical claims that were denied by the insurance company. Sony’s insurance company is Aetna.
Another document leaked in the hack is a spreadsheet from a human resources folder on Sony’s servers that includes the birth dates, gender, health condition and medical costs for 34 Sony employees, their spouses and children who had very high medical bills. The conditions listed include premature births, cancer, kidney failure and alcoholic liver cirrhosis. The document doesn’t include employees’ names.
“This stuff will haunt all those people the rest of their lives. Once it’s up on the Internet it is up in perpetuity,” said Deborah Peel, director of Patient Privacy Rights, a non-profit group.
“This is a thousand times worse than that other stuff,” she said, referring to salary information and personal e-mails. “Health information is the most sensitive information about you. This is the absolute worst nightmare for this employee and their family. Why they are doing this with the name and location and all the identifiable information is beyond me.”
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[Photo from flickr user Philippe Boivin]
