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The Healthcare Breach Report: Hacking and IT Incidents on the Rise

2021 Healthcare Breach Report Final_Page_1

The vast majority of healthcare organizations utilize and store highly sensitive data, such as protected health information (PHI) and personal data such Social Security numbers, personal financial data, and more. For our annual Healthcare Breach Report, we analyzed data from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ “Wall of Shame” to get a closer look at the state of security for healthcare organizations over the last few years. These breaches are broken down into four categories: hacking or IT incidents, unauthorized access or disclosure, loss or theft, and other. 

In 2020, there were 599 breaches – an increase of 55.1% since the previous year. California led the way with the most healthcare breaches of 2020, with a total of 49. Although the threat landscape has been continuing to evolve, hacking and IT incidents seem to still be leading the way in the cause of breaches. Undoubtedly, sensitive information attracts a lot of attention from malicious entities that aim to exploit this data for political or monetary gain. This past year, the cost per breached record for a healthcare company amounted to $499. Yet again, billions of dollars have been wasted because of improper cybersecurity and healthcare organizations have yet to understand the importance of securing data in the cloud.

To learn more about the above findings download the full 2021 Healthcare Breach Report below.

Healthcare Breach

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Bitglass Blog authored by Will Houcheime. Read the original post at: https://www.bitglass.com/blog/hacking-and-it-incidents-on-the-rise