By Dan Hounsell

As healthcare IT managers work diligently to shore up breaches in their cybersecurity defenses in an effort to protect valuable patient and research data, health systems continue to find gaps in their organizations’ defenses.

A database containing medical records of almost 200,000 U.S. military veterans was recently discovered to have been exposed online by a vendor contracted by the Veterans Administration, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. It appears that a researcher was attempting to find security deficiencies and flaws in United Valor Solutions systems. VA officials do not believe there was a data breach; rather, this was done for research purposes at the request of the contractor, United Valor Solutions.

The exposed data included patient names, birth dates, medical information, contact information and physician details. The database also exposed unencrypted passwords and billing information.