By Olivia Solon, Wired UK
A team of researchers has used data-mining and machine-learning techniques to find subtle changes in electrical activity in the heart that can be used to predict potentially fatal heart attacks.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, MIT, Harvard Medical School and Brigham Women’s Hospital in Boston sifted through 24-hour electrocardiograms (which measure the electrical activity in the heart) from 4,557 heart-attack patients to find errant patterns that until now had been dismissed as noise or were undetectable.
They discovered several of these subtle markers of heart damage that could help doctors identify which heart attack patients are at a high risk of dying soon. Electrocardiograms (ECGs) are already used to monitor heart attack patients, but doctors tend to look at the data in snapshots rather than analyze the lengthy recordings.

The team developed ways to scan huge volumes of data to find slight abnormalities — computational biomarkers — that indicate defects in the heart muscle and nervous system. These included looking for subtle variability in the shape of apparently normal-looking heartbeats over time; specific sequences of changes in heart rate; and a comparison of a patient’s long-term ECG signal with those of other patients with similar histories.
They found that looking for these particular biomarkers in addition to using the traditional assessment tools helped to predict 50 percent more deaths. The best thing is that the data is already routinely collected, so implementing the system would not be costly.
Around a million Americans have heart attacks each year, with more than a quarter of those in groups who survive the initial attack dying within a year. Current techniques miss around 70 percent of the patients who are at high risk of complications, according to Zeeshan Syed, assistant professor at the University of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Syed explains: “There’s information buried in the noise, and it’s almost invisible because of the sheer volume of the data. But by using sophisticated computational techniques, we can separate what is truly noise from what is actually abnormal behavior that tells us how unstable the heart is.”
Doctors tend to look out for several factors in heart attack patients, including blood test results, echocardiograms, medical history and the patient’s overall health. Those identified as having a high risk of sudden death due to irregular heart rhythms can be given medication or implantable defibrillators, which can shock the heart back into its regular rhythm.
However, it’s hard to work out who needs these treatments before it’s too late — most people who die in this manner aren’t identified as candidates for implantable defibrillators.
MIT professor John Guttag explains: “We’re reaching a point in medicine where our ability to collect data has far outstripped our ability to analyze or digest it. You can’t ask a physician to look at 72-hours [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/data-mining-heart-attack/

While most of Southern California’s office rental market remains as anemic as the economy, one niche is experiencing robust growth: heavily secured offices where businesses house their all-important computer servers.
Nearly all of us send and receive signals through data centers every day. Simple tasks like browsing a website, paying a restaurant bill with a credit card or making a phone call may require their services.

In Los Angeles County, there are only about a dozen of these specialized buildings that protect the precious data of banks, oil companies, stores and all manner of other firms. But the need for them is exploding and more are on the way, real estate experts said, and the next generation will have perks for workers unheard of in the past.
“There is a huge disparity between demand and supply, and that disparity is projected to grow over the next five years,” said real estate broker Michael Siteman of Jones Lang LaSalle.
The soft economy is helping drive demand, he said. “Companies are trying do more with less, and the only way to do that is to automate.”
These days, automation requires electronic data stored and processed on servers. The innocuous-looking metal boxes are so crucial to corporate America’s ability to function that they are nurtured with obsessive care.
Some companies keep their servers in special rooms on site, but many others prefer to have them at an outside location that has reliable backup power if the lights go out and security worthy of the crown jewels.
At the Garland Center office building on the edge of downtown Los Angeles, visitors are photographed before heading down to a sprawling underground bunker built in the early 1980s by First Interstate Bank as an earthquake-safe haven for its computer operations. After passing a second guard station, guests to one server center operator [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-data-centers-20110930,0,3390552.story?track=rss

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – A massive data breach, in which the personal and medical records of millions of military patients and their families were compromised, happened when the records were stolen out of a data contractor’s car in San Antonio, officials told Reuters on Thursday.
The information for some 4.6 million active and retired military personnel, as well as their families, was on back up-tapes from an electronic health care record used to capture and preserve patient data from 1992 through September 7 of this year, according to Science Applications International Corp (SAIC).
The families used the federal government’s TRICARE health provider. SAIC is the suburban Washington firm that handles military health provider TRICARE’s data.
The tapes went missing on September 14 when they were “among items stolen from an employee’s car in San Antonio,” SAIC spokesman Vernon Guidry told Reuters.
They were in the car, he said, because they were “being transferred from one federal facility to another in compliance with the terms of their contract.”
He said there’s no indication the car thief was after the tapes or even knew what they were.
SAIC is working with San Antonio police and a private investigator to recover the tapes, Guidry said.
After announcing the breach on Thursday, SAIC officials scrambled to reassure patients the “risk of harm to patients is judged to be low, despite the data elements involved.”
“Retrieving the data on the tapes would require knowledge of and access to specific hardware and software and knowledge of the system and data structure,” SAIC said in a statement released Thursday.
NO FINANCIAL DATA
TRICARE officials say the data on the tapes include Social Security numbers, addresses and phone numbers, and some personal data such as clinical notes, laboratory tests, and prescriptions. No financial data, such as credit card or bank account information, are on the tapes, officials said.
The SAIC statement said the company withheld information about the breach until Thursday so it could “determine the degree of risk this data loss represented before making notifications” so as “to not raise undue alarm in our beneficiaries.”
Guidry said the data cover 4.9 million patients who received treatment at military hospitals and military treatment facilities in San Antonio. The breach also includes information for patients who may have been receiving treatment at other military medical facilities, but whose laboratory work or other diagnostic work was done at San Antonio hospitals.
Despite the assurance that the risk is low, computer security expert Dwayne Williams, associate director of the Technology Research Group at the University of Texas San Antonio, said patients should take preemptive steps.
“If somebody intentionally went after this data, they are going to have the right hardware and software to read these files,” he said. “This equipment is available and can be purchased on the Internet.
SAIC and TRICARE have set up emergency response centers for patients to call to get help in dealing with the security breach, and help them to place a fraud alert on their credit reports.
TRICARE has a total of 9.6 million enrollees worldwide. It is the HMO [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/medical-records-4-9-million-exposed-texas-data-191037143.html

NEW YORK (AP) — A document obtained by the ACLU shows for the first time how the four largest cellphone companies in the U.S. treat data about their subscribers’ calls, text messages, Web surfing and approximate locations.The one-page document from the Justice Department’s cybercrime division shows, for instance, that Verizon Wireless keeps, for a year, information about which cell towers subscriber phones connect to. That data that can be used to figure out where the phone has been, down to the level of a neighborhood. ATT has kept the same data continuously since July 2008.The sheet is a guide for law enforcement, which can request the information from the carriers through legal channels. The North Carolina section of the American Civil Liberties Union obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU said. Wired.com reported earlier about the document, which is dated Aug. 2010.The document was released by the ACLU Wednesday, but has been hiding in plain sight on the website of the Vermont public defender’s office. It can be found there through a Google search, but only if the searcher knows the exact title of the document.A few data points from the sheet were known outside law enforcement circles, but wireless carriers have not been open about their policies. They aren’t required to keep the data, and they keep the same information for varying lengths of time. Some don’t keep data at all that other companies store. For instance, it says T-Mobile USA doesn’t keep any information on Web browsing activity. Verizon, on the other hand, keeps some information for up to a year that can be used to ascertain if a particular phone visited a particular Web site.According to the sheet, Sprint Nextel Corp.’s Virgin Mobile brand keeps the text content of text messages for three months. Verizon keeps it for three to five days. None of the other carriers keep texts at all, but they keep records of who texted who for more than a year.The document says ATT keeps for five to seven years a record of who text messages who —and when, but not the content of the messages. Virgin Mobile only keeps that data for two to three months.The carriers don’t have recordings of calls, but keep information about calls that are made and received for at least a year.The ACLU said it believes people have a right to know how long phone companies keep records of their activities.Although the sheet is dated August 2010, Tom Slovenski, a private investigator specializing in cellphone data, said it is still accurate.Sprint spokesman Jason Gertzen said he couldn’t comment on the specific figures in the sheet. Normally, he said, a subpoena, court order, or customer consent form from a recognized law enforcement agency is necessary for the carrier to hand out data. However, Sprint also responds to emergency requests, as in missing persons cases, if the police can document their need, he said.The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/document-shows-phone-cos-treat-private-data-193106151.html

Computerworld – Sensitive data including Social Security Numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers and personal health data belonging to about 4.9 million active and retired U.S. military personnel may have been compromised after backup tapes containing the data went missing recently.

The information on the tapes was from an electronic healthcare application used to capture patient data. It does not include bank, credit card or other financial data, according to a statement released by TRICARE, a healthcare system for active and retired military personnel and their families.

The breach affects all those who received care at the military’s San Antonio area military treatment facilities between 1992 and Sept. 7 of this year. Those affected include individuals who had filled pharmacy prescriptions or had laboratory tests done at any of the facilities, TRICARE said.

As is often typical with such incidents, the information on the backup tapes does not appear to have been encrypted. But in its statement, TRICARE maintained that the risk of the data being misused was low “since retrieving the data on the tapes would require knowledge of and access to specific hardware and software and knowledge of the [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220398/Data_breach_affects_4.9M_active_retired_military_personnel

Yesterday a document detailing mobile carriers’ data retention policies was revealed. We took some time to get privacy advocates’ take on the new information, which included the fact the Verizon alone keeps your text message content for a number of days and ATT holds onto to call records for up to seven years.
“The moral of the story is use a prepaid phone and text,” says Beth Givens, director of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. “If you’re concerned about retention periods of carriers, prepaid phones and texting are the way to go to maximize your privacy.”
While texting has predominantly become our mobile communication method of choice, that doesn’t mean cell users are safe. “I think this should be a concern to individuals who gave up land lines and only use cell phones,” Givens says. And of course, there’s the fact that your texting habits and even contents are anything but private. Commenting on that fact that Verizon holds onto your text message contents for 3-5 days, Givens ask “why?”
“When any company retains data for a long period of time it opens them up to problems and potential abuses. And those problems include data breaches and of course excessive or inappropriate uses by law enforcement.”
Consumers should also be aware of what cell tower data retention means. “I think it’s important that consumers know that that particular data is retained for lengthy periods. It’s increasingly rich and it can reflect one’s activities over a long period of time,” Greg Nojeim, senior counsel anddirector for the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology explains. “It’s also important for consumers to know that there is no one standard specified in the law, for law enforcement to meet in order to retain this information. Government argues it can obtain this information without proving strong evidence of cause.”
“From a consumer perspective, this revelation means that a vast quantity of information about their past activities as revealed by their location is easily available to law enforcement unless the law is changed,” he says.
Nojeim says the document reveals the amount of time companies are holding onto IP address information is actually much shorter than the bill currently going through Congress would allow. This translates into giving law enforcement more access to that data. Rebecca Jeschke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says consumers need to pay attention to this type of revelation, and realize what it means. “Consumers should absolutely be concerned about how much data is being collected.  While it would be best not to have this data collected at all, we need clear rules and regulations about who has access to these records and when.  A lot of third-parties are collecting data about us: Our ISPs, our mobile carriers, social networking sites like Facebook, any number of apps, retailers, transit companies.  Combined, they create a very intimate picture of our life.  We need to know who collects what, and when, and how, so we can make sure America’s laws are consistent with how we want both companies and the government access [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/privacy-experts-sound-off-mobile-data-retention-200540814.html

LONDON (AP) — Stocks surged Thursday on a combination of surprisingly strong U.S. economic data and the overwhelming approval by Germany’s parliament of a bill to strengthen a bailout fund intended to help European countries deal with their debts.News that the U.S. economy grew by more than previously thought in the second quarter of the year and a surprisingly large drop in weekly jobless claims were the main catalysts behind the advance. Stocks are a leading indicator of future economic activity and the better than expected U.S. economic data has reined in fears over the global economic recovery.Alongside concerns over Europe’s debt crisis, investors have been spooked by a run of weak U.S. economic data over the past couple of months — the result has been huge turmoil in financial markets.But news that the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the April-June quarter, up from an estimate of 1 percent made a month ago has calmed some investor fears about the world’s largest economy, especially as the improvement largely reflected more consumer spending.”The quality of the improvement far outweighs the scale of improvement with the U.S. consumer key to future growth,” said Michael Woolfolk, an analyst at The Bank of New York Mellon. “The risk for the third quarter is to the upside, with the outside possibility that it could well come in at the upper end of the 2.0-3.0 percent range.”Further good news emerged from the Labor Department, which found that jobless claims last week dropped 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 391,000, the lowest level since April 2. It’s the first time applications have fallen below 400,000 since Aug. 6. and the figures could prompt investors to upgrade their forecasts for next week’s nonfarm payrolls figures for September.The mood in stock markets had already been largely positive after a clear victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel in a vote on beefing up Europe’s bailout fund. More encouraging for the markets, perhaps, was the fact that Merkel did not have to rely on support from opposition parties.In the short-term, the markets’ hope is that the vote in favor of an expanded rescue fund — with 523 lawmakers in favor, 85 against and 3 abstentions — indicates Germany is fully behind efforts to shore up Europe’s defenses against a crisis that has already seen three countries bailed out and stoked talk that Greece will default.Germany is the biggest economy among the 17-countries that use the euro currency and has to contribute more than others to boosting the firepower of the bailout fund, the so-called European Financial Stability Facility, or EFSF. If passed, Germany will be guaranteeing loans in the future for up to euro211 billion ($288 billion), rather than euro123 billion so far.”The overwhelming majority in the Bundestag is a good sign and will hopefully mark a step change in German commitment to bringing the spiraling crisis under control,” said Sony Kapoor, managing director of Re-Define, an economic think-tank.In Europe, Germany’s DAX was up 1.8 percent [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-lift-us-data-german-vote-fund-135646448.html

TRICARE: Information Of 4.9 Million Patients Possibly At RiskSAN ANTONIO — A massive data breach could affect millions who have received care from military facilities in San Antonio since 1992.TRICARE, a health care program that serves active and retired military, released a statement about the breach on their website.According to the statement, on Sept. 14, 2011, Science Applications International Corporation reported a data breach involving personally identifiable and protected health information impacting an estimated 4.9 million military clinic and hospital patients.The information was contained on backup tapes from an electronic health care record used in the military health system to capture patient data from 1992 through Sept. 7 2011.The information may include Social Security numbers, addresses and phone numbers, and some personal health data such as clinical notes, laboratory tests and prescriptions, the release stated.According to the release, there is no financial data, such as credit card or bank account information on the backup tapes.TRICARE said in the statement the risk of harm to patients is low because retrieving the data would require knowledge and access to specific hardware, software and knowledge of the system and data structure.According to the release, the incident is being investigated and both SAIC and TRICARE are reviewing current data protection security policies and procedures to prevent similar breaches in the future.Anyone who suspects that they were impacted by this incident is urged to take steps to protect their personal information and should be guided by the Federal Trade Commission at: ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/consumers/defend.Concerned patients may contact the SAIC Incident Response Call Center, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Time at the following numbers:United States, call toll free: (855) 366-0140, International, call collect: (952) 556-8312
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Article source: http://www.ksat.com/news/29336557/detail.html

Data centers are planned for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. They will be Google’s first data centers in Asia.

By

Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer /
September 29, 2011

Google workers walk by a Google sign at company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., in this file photo from 2006. Google plans to build three data centers in Asia, its first in the region.
Paul Sakuma/AP/File

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HONG KONG

Google Inc. plans to invest at least $200 million to build its first three data centers in Asia as it expands its infrastructure to keep pace with the region’s burgeoning Internet use.

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The Internet search giant has bought land in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore for the data centers, which typically are secure facilities packed with thousands of computers that store and serve vast amounts of data.It aims to finish construction in one to two years, but didn’t give specific start dates. The Taiwan and Hong Kong data centers are expected to cost $100 million each, including the cost of land. It didn’t give a figure for Singapore.”Asia’s the fastest growing market for Internet users and Internet usage so we’re seeing large numbers of new users coming online every day,” Taj Meadows, Google’s policy communications manager in Asia, said Thursday.RELATED: Google’s 16 biggest purchases, and how they worked outGoogle is setting up the new data centers so users can have “faster and more reliable access” to online services, he said.The data center expansion also reflects the growing popularity of cloud-based computing, in which users access word processing, spreadsheet and other programs over the Internet instead of keeping them on their own machines.The expansion also reflects heavy demand in Asia for online entertainment. Thais, for example, most often search online for music and videos while South Koreans frequently use their phones to upload videos to YouTube, according to Google data, Meadows said.Mountain View, Calif.-based Google already has six data centers in the United States and two in Europe.Google boasts that its data centers are energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Its 200 million euro ($272 million) Finnish facility, for example, is housed in an old paper mill with a high-tech cooling system that uses seawater. The company said the Asian data centers be built to the same standards.Once they come online, the Taiwan and Hong Kong centers will employ five to 20 full-time staff, including computer technicians and engineers.Google has 15 offices and thousands of employees across Asia.RELATED: Google’s 16 biggest purchases, and how they worked out

USA »

With Red Sox breakdown, that bad old feeling is back in Boston

[...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2011/0929/Data-centers-Google-expands-to-Asia

One of the Pentagon’s largest contractors said late Wednesday it had discovered a data breach affecting as many as 4.9 million patients who have received care from military facilities in San Antonio since 1992.
Science Applications International Corp. said the breach involved backup computer tapes from an electronic health care record. Some of the information included Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and private health information for patients in 10 states.
A statement posted on the Defense Department’s Tricare health system website said no credit card or bank account information was on the backup tapes.
Tricare covers military retirees as well as active-duty troops and their dependents.
“The risk of harm to patients is judged to be low despite the data elements involved since retrieving the data on the tapes would require knowledge of and access to specific hardware and software and knowledge of the system and data structure,” the website statement said.
Vernon Guidry, a spokesman for SAIC, a McLean, Va.-based scientific, engineering and technology applications firm, could not say when the data from the backup tapes was compromised.
The statement on Tricare’s website, however, said the tapes contained information on patients visiting San Antonio military hospitals and clinics or had tests analyzed here from 1992 through Sept. 7. The San Antonio Military Medical Center, formerly BAMC, was apparently unaware of the breach.
The tapes held data on people living throughout Tricare’s southern region, which includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas with the exception of El Paso.
The data “include, but are not limited to names, Social Security numbers, addresses, diagnoses, treatment information, provider names, provider locations and other patient” information, the two-page statement said. Clinical notes, lab tests and prescription information also may be on the tapes.
Guidry didn’t say how the backup tapes were lost. He said the breach “consisted of the loss of storage media, not an electronic breach. There was a loss of magnetic storage media.”
SAIC did not issue a news release about the data breach on its website. One corner of the SAIC home page, though, said an “Incident Response Call Center” had been created for Tricare patients. The firm’s brief statement did not use the word breach, instead describing it as a “reported loss of back-up computer tapes containing personally identifiable and protected health information” for Tricare patients.
Guidry said his company “was the custodian of the data when the breach occurred,” and that it was reported to the San Antonio Police Department when discovered Sept. 14.
He said “there was no indication whatsoever” that the data had been used for some illegal purpose and didn’t think that was likely. The statement on Tricare’s website said it and the company were working to identify beneficiaries whose information may have been involved in the breach.
The release advised the beneficiaries to monitor their credit and seek a free fraud alert for 90 days using a Federal Trade Commission website. Beneficiaries also can call the SAIC Incident Response Call Center from [...] Continue Reading…

Article source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Data-breach-exposes-4-9-million-Tricare-patients-2194067.php