Cyber Cure Me

Cybercriminals and nation-state actors are indeed targeting healthcare organizations for their valuable data: cyberattacks and physical criminal activity now have officially surpassed insider negligence as the main cause of a data breach in healthcare organizations.

The Ponemon Institute’s new Fifth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy and Security of Healthcare Data, published today, found that close to 45% of all data breaches in healthcare are due to criminal activity such as cybercriminal and nation-state hacks, malicious insiders, and physical theft, a 125% increase in such activity over the past five years. That’s a first, since employee or insider negligence — user errors, lost laptops and thumb drives, etc. — accounted for the majority of breaches last year and in years past, according to Ponemon.