Despite the data privacy protections supposedly conferred by regulations like HIPAA and HITECH, consumers’ confidential health and personal information is still not safe enough. That’s the lesson to be learned from Franklin, TN-based Community Health Systems’ (CHS) August 18 regulatory filing. In the filing, CHS disclosed that the names, SSNs, addresses, birth dates, and phone numbers of approximately 4.5 million people across 28 states have been stolen, according to Computerworld. Those 4.5 million victims, whom Computerworld reported had either received or been referred for services to CHS-affiliated physicians, are now at risk of identity theft, thanks to the security weaknesses of their healthcare provider. This latest large-scale data breach serves to highlight just how critical data security is in today’s connected age.