A major security blunder has left thousands of HSE staff open to identity theft.

Staff were not told for 13 days that an unencrypted laptop containing all their personal details had been stolen from HSE offices at the Carnegie Centre in Dublin's Lord Edward Street.

The staff were only informed by letter on Wednesday -- a full 13 days after the theft occurred on September 17.

The disturbing disclosure is the latest in a series of similar HSE computer thefts in which confidential information has been lost, leaving innocent people completely vulnerable to identity fraud.

Investigation

The office from which the latest laptop was taken is the HSE administration headquarters and holds records of medical cardholders in the country

Thousands of records of staff from the Dublin South district, including their full names, details of their wages, their staff numbers and work areas, were held on the stolen computer, which was not encrypted.

Gardai have been called in and the matter is now under investigation by both the Gardai and the Data Protection Commissioner. The HSE is undertaking a major review of all its computers to encrypt information so that similar thefts do not put confidential information into the hands of the thieves.

This is the second HSE laptop theft within weeks. A laptop, BlackBerry and data disk with the personal details of 1,150 people were stolen from the home of a senior medical officer in Public Health and Medicine.

They contained personal information, which was gathered for a survey on the provision of the influenza vaccine to 1,150 healthcare workers in autumn last year.

Consent forms with names, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, GP names and data relating to the respondents' occupation were contained on the disc.

That laptop had a password but it was not encrypted, so identity thieves armed with simple software could crack it and get access to the vital information.

After that theft, the HSE made a promise to prioritise and encrypt all devices containing personal and medically senstitive data within a month.

There have been four other HSE computers stolen already this year with confidential information including details of surgical procedures, diagnoses and treatment of more than 300 patients.Health chiefs only recently began to inform those affected about missing data on two of the stolen laptops, more than two months after they were taken from an office in Mullingar, Co Westmeath.

The HSE thefts are part of a long line of incidents in the past year where private bodies and goverment agencies have lost personal information.

In August it emerged that 380,000 social welfare recipients' details were contained on a laptop stolen from an audit room used by the Comptroller and Auditor General's Office at the Department of Social and Family Affairs.

In April, Bank of Ireland admitted that the personal details of 10,000 customers had been stolen.

Awareness

The latest theft emerged on the eve of the inaugural National Identity Fraud Prevention Week.

It will run next week from October 6 to 12 and aims to educate the general public and businesses that they could, and should, be doing more to protect themselves.

Identity fraud is one of Europe's fastest growing crimes. Criminals can forge identifies and use the details to spend a fortune on credit cards.

- Clodagh Sheehy