Sounds like a bad tabloid headline but, according to this article, some mean people hacked the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program and stole some patient and prescription data and are now demanding $10 M to return the data.  This story was picked up by the AP whom reported that the state of Virginia refuses to pay the ransom.

This is a disturbing story for two reasons:  1) you would think that with all the cool things you can do with technology, why would people still insist on doing bad things?, 2) will this become a trend?

I don’t know if you know this but kidnapping has become a common thing in countries like Mexico.  It’s become so common in fact that now it’s starting to take place in border towns–on the US side.  Someone is kidnapped on the state side and quickly whisked away to the Mexico side where the law is less likely to find them before the ransom can be paid.

So what does Mexico have to do with this story?  Well if one person can hold data for ransom, who’s to stop this from becoming more and more prevalent.  I guess the first thing we should take from this is the importance of security and backups.  The other thing is that crime is crime whether its physical or cybernetic and when a crime is committed we all lose.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post