Post by Medical Device Network

Last week, data from 500,000 participants of UK Biobank’s database were made available for sale online following a breach, the UK Government’s technology minister has confirmed. In an oral statement delivered in the House of Commons today (23 April), UK technology minister Ian Murray confirmed that data for all members involved in the database was found listed for sale on the Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba. UK Biobank is a health data project that aims to improve disease prevention and treatment by providing anonymised genetic, physical, and medical data from volunteers to approved researchers to support studies for conditions including cancer, dementia and heart disease. Commenting on the breach, Kristy Gouldsmith, data protection partner at law firm Spencer West, said: “The public needs to understand how this breach happened and what UK Biobank will do to prevent further breaches. It is a significant data breach for the health information of 500,000 members to be offered for sale on Alibaba. “Alibaba is a regular website that anyone can buy a product from. It’s fortunate that no sales were made, considering that the information was listed for sale three times. UK Biobank needs to explain how a breach of this magnitude happened,” Gouldsmith continued. #UKdatabreach #medicaldata #security #databreach Read the full report below: https://lnkd.in/ecM2XXWA