Over 130,000 names, dates of birth, addresses, medical diagnoses and social insurance numbers were lost from Lincoln Hospital in New York.
The data was stored on a common CD in an easily readable form.
The hospital used FedEx for transport of data among itself and cooperative research companies. However, one article with records stored on a CD never reached its target.
The hospital management admitted that despite extensive investigation and search for the lost disk the do not know where the data is located. Nevertheless, this type of records are the most valuable on the black market with personal IDs.
This case shows that if you rely on a transportation company, no matter how well time-proved, your sensitive data can be threatened. Therefore, it is good to secure the transported data so that a random finder could not access it.
Source: theregister.co.uk