After procuring the telephone number of the backup facility from Dr. McGonagle’s secretary Peterson called the company and once he got to the office of the head of security Buck Banjo, he asked, “Hi, this is Brian Peterson from the IRS, and no we’re not auditing you, we’re reviewing an estate tax return for someone and wanted to know if you have had any security breaches in the last two years where someone’s dental records might have been swapped?”
“None that I recall. We’ve of course had lots of people try to hack in do damage to our system, but no records have been altered from hacking that I know of? We run a fairly sophisticated program here every day that compares files at the end of the day with files from the previous day and where they differ they are flagged with when the file was altered, and then we check the times with the origins of incoming data streams from our customers. If there was a data change, it would have to have originated from the customer or we would have investigated it. What dentist is this?”, said Buck. “Dr. McGonagle,” replied Brian. “Let me check my sheets, nope, no problems with McGonagle, ever” Buck responded. “Sorry”.
Brian called Laura, “Laura, I hate to impose, but could you call Mr. Jones physician to see where he kept his records and whether they were secure.” “Sure, Brian, but you’ll owe me a home cooked Irish meal” teased Laura.
“Hello, Dr. Stephens, this is Laura Holden, the Medical Examiner in Virginia, how are you today. I’m following up on the Sheldon Jones case. I have been asked by the IRS to check and make sure that the body I checked was really Sheldon Jones, I don’t know why. How did you keep your records”. “In my office here and electronically backed up offsite. Before I sent them to you, I doubled checked the hard copy with the electronic copy to ensure that they were identical and they were”, replied Dr. Stephens. “Okay, that’s good enough for me”, said Laura, “sorry to bother you”.
Laura then dialed the number for Brian Peterson, “Hi, Bri, this is Laura, I just got off the phone with Dr. Stephens, it was Jones”. “He would have to have been some sort of chameleon to change his DNA, his dental records, and his height in hard copy and computer”, added Laura.
“Thanks Laura, I just wanted to be sure I was thorough here”, Brian responded. “I guess I need to buy some corned beef and cabbage”.