If your medical data falls into somebody else's hands, there are only a few possible ways that it could have happened:

1. Somebody broke into your office with the sole purpose of stealing your medical data, through physical or electronic means. Why would somebody do this? I'm not saying that it couldn't happen, but how likely is it, really?

2. Somebody breaks into your place to steal a bunch of computers, which just happen to contain medical data. You have lost your data but the thief will probably just wipe the hard drive. Your database is probably safe, even if unencrypted.

It would be hard to tamper with the database directly, and it would require at least a little knowledge to open it using a bootleg copy of Amazing Charts.

A person could hang out and search this User Board and figure out how to do it.

However, why would they? They were there for the computer! They're either going to sell it, or play Halo 3 on it.

3. You lose your thumb drive with your data on it. This is actually the most likely way for your data to wind up in someone else's hands. Even if you attach it to your car keys, who here hasn't lost their car keys?

Now, the data is still somewhat hard to get at, but I think human nature will make it even more likely that someone will try, under this scenario.

Who here, if they found a thumb drive, would not take it home and open it, to try and figure out who it belonged to? And if all it had on it was an unencrypted Amazing Charts database, who wouldn't google "open Amazing Charts database"?

Which would lead you to this user board, which tells you explicitly how to open it (I will PM anyone who doesn't already know how):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=open+amazing+charts+database

Now, I agree with Vinny that the thumbdrive/offsite backup is the most convenient way to backup, but I think it I think it would be wise to encrypt your database if you're taking it out of your office on a thumbdrive.

We are also discussing the issue in this thread:

http://www.amazingcharts.com/ub/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=4584&page=1&fpart=1

If you were using this IronKey gadget we discuss, Vinny's strategy would be a very convenient and secure strategy.

However, I also think Bert makes a good point about needing several days worth of backups available, so if yesterday's backup is corrupt, you have the one from two days ago to fall back on.

Brian Cotner, M.D.
Family Practice