Protecting health data becomes more difficult in a socially networked world, but blocking access to these popular sites is being met with dissent, a panel of health care CISOs said Wednesday at the RSA Conference.

Data breaches involving privacy information continue to increase despite the costs, embarrassment and negative publicity associated with them.

The "Kneber" botnet is made up of 74,126 machines from nearly 2,500 organizations that were infected with a variant of Zeus, according to researchers at a network security firm.

The theft of two company laptops from Florida- based health insurance provider, AvMed Health Plans, may have exposed the personal information of current and former subscribers and their dependents.

A laptop containing sensitive patient information was recently stolen from an employee of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine.