The division of customer affairs in the New Jersey has proclaimed that the Horizon BCSC will pay an amount of 1.1 million as a penalty. This penalty is due to their failure of data protection. The company lost the data of almost 690, 000 individuals. These were their plan members as well. The HIPAA demands these entities to practice managerial, technical as well as physical protection in order to safeguard the details of people and the members of fitness plan. Despite the fact that the data coding is not important but it is considered as a debatable problem. The covered firms by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act must for that reason contemplate the usage of coding mechanisms in order to take care of the details of their plan members. This is important for rest as for in motion activities. In case the data coding is not selected, on the other hand, proper actions must be taken to offer a good level of data protection.
Moreover, the covered firms are asked to implement an extensive risk investigation of all the probable threats to the privacy, integrity and convenience of PHI. In case, the note books are used in order to save the details of individuals or health plan affiliates, a threat calculator must be used to show the presence of probable threat of data leakage. Reasonable security checks must however be there in the way to resist the exposure of data. This should be practiced if the gadgets are stolen or lost in the event. Data coding is a very good method of saving the data. On the other hand, many other measures can be taken to take care of such things. But, entering a password is not sufficient for this purpose. Data coding is one level upper in saving the data as compared to the passwords.
In 2013 November, two note book devices were lost by the Horizon officers. The laptops were locked with the passwords but the data present in the laptop was not coded. In addition to that, no other controls were implemented to make the data save. One can easily attach cables and hard drives to the laptops.
