IT Company Closes After Data Breach

Here is another illustration of why we are never completely immune to identity theft no matter how careful we are with our personal information.

Verus Inc., an IT company that built and maintained Websites and other services for forty to sixty hospitals in the United States, was implicated for the security breaches for at least five hospitals and has gone out of business after investors pulled the plug after a blunder that caused a great deal of client data to be exposed to the outside world.

All breaches have been attributed to one incident when Verus employees left the firewall down after transferring from one server to another. Find out more about the incident here.

While it seems a little harsh, those handling sensitive data can not afford to be so careless. Even if the investors hadn't refused funding, the company would have probably closed anyway. Once the information was released, I doubt that any client would have trusted them. Patient data from some of these hospitals has been compromised. Although no one has reported identity theft as a result of this breach, the damage is still done and the possibility for identity theft is there.