This year, Data Privacy Day happened to fall just a few days after St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital announced a possible security breach.
Officials said they are working with a data recovery expert to make sure patients' information is not compromised after a thumb drive was stolen from a restricted area last October. Officials at St. Luke's Cornwall said the thumb drive may have contained limited protected health information, but did not include Social Security numbers or medical records.
Experts said compromised data can have a negative impact. Eric Wedaa is the founder of the Hudson Valley Cyber Security Consortium, which is held at Marist College. He’s also the Senior System Administrator at the college. While he can't speak specifically to the St. Luke’s case, he said people and companies can take basic steps to protect sensitive information.
"All removable media, flash drives or portable hard disks should be encrypted, so if they do get lost, if somebody finds it, there's no way for them to get to the data that is on it," Wedaa said.
He added people can also protect their data by avoiding suspicious emails.
"Don't click on links that say 'here's your salary report that you requested,' " Wedaa said. "If you didn't request a salary report and you’re not in finance, it's probably got a virus in it."
Wedaa said to protect your personal information, choose really strong passwords that include special characters, numbers and avoid dictionary words and names.
"First initials of your mother, your father and some year that's not a birth year won't be guessed as easily as Marist," he said.
One thing is for sure: Hackers will always try to get their hands on personal information, so the message of Data Privacy Day is one to remember year-round.