Earlier this week, a map containing sensitive information was mistakenly released. Oakland County Officials asserted that the map had internal data related to COVID-19.

Basically, the map has a record of COVID-19 cases, their races, gender, age, address, and all the essential demographic information. However, the map was slightly different as it did not include any names or social security numbers. It also didn’t carry any information that could target any other health concern.

Apparently, the data is used for public health analysis by the Oakland County Health Division.

The map was leaked on the WeChat app at around 7 pm, last Tuesday. The data was protected by 8 am, the next morning. The officials clarified that while uploading, the data was accidentally marked public. When the IT Department ran a test, they discovered that only 100 WeChat users have access the GIS URL, and most were simply duplicates. They further guaranteed that the URL has not been shared outside of WeChat, in fact, it is not even available there anymore.

Source: Click On Detriot

“Information security, especially around data critical to Health Division’s analysis during this pandemic, is of vital importance to the IT Department. We are taking additional precautions going forward including no longer sharing internal GIS data by link but rather within our own private environment.” – said Mike Timm, Oakland County’s director of information technology in his official statement.

Health Division has reported an accident to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.