Blood bank’s laptops with sensitive information reported stolen

Two laptop computers are missing from Lifeblood blood bank’s possession and presumed to be stolen. The dual-password protected laptops were used on mobile blood collection drives, and each included information about Lifeblood’s blood donors, including names, contact information, blood type, gender, ethnicity, and, in some cases, Social Security numbers.

The organization is notifying all of the approximately 320,000 affected individuals about the situation and encouraging them to place fraud alerts on their credit reports in the unlikely event that an unauthorized person gained access to the data on the computers.

Since the discovery Lifeblood has implemented additional security measures to protect against future theft of property or donor information. These measures include more restrictive access to and continuous closed circuit monitoring of the areas housing the laptops, installation of software to allow remote tracking and erasure of the hard drives on laptops used on mobile drives, and additional programming to prevent full Social Security numbers from being downloaded to mobile laptops.