“When an ER team is faced with a life and death situation and needs information immediately, 16-character user passwords with a screen that locks in five minutes are not good solutions,” CISO BreachQuest

BreachQuesthe has released its Cybersecurity Risks In Healthcare Report, which reveals where the danger lies and looks at past cyberattacks with types of ransom demanded.

But it concluded while malicious breaches are a threat, negligent breaches happen twice as often.

It aims to help healthcare providers minimize the risk of ransomware and practices organizations can take to be more secure.

Medical records are between ten and 20 times more valuable than credit card numbers or banking information, making the healthcare industry a favorite target for cyber attackers. According to MarketDataForecast, the healthcare cybersecurity market is expected to reach a $24.58 billion by 2026.

The “Elevated Pulse: Cybersecurity Risks In Healthcare Report” includes original BreachQuest analysis and data along with pooled research from various sources. The comprehensive data collection paints a very challenging environment for healthcare organizations:

• 93% of healthcare organizations have experienced a data breach in the past three years
• Healthcare organizations report around two breaches a day on average 
• Security breaches cost the healthcare industry $6 trillion by the end of 2020
• In Q1 of 2022 more than 6.9 million individuals were affected by 136 healthcare breaches
• Negligent breaches are happening twice as often as malicious ones

“All organizations need to consider minimizing user friction for security solutions, but user efficiency and ease of use is especially important for doctors, nurses, and medical personnel,” said Sandy Dunn, CISO of BreachQuest and former CISO of BlueCross of Idaho.

“When an ER team is faced with a life and death situation and needs information immediately, 16-character user passwords with a screen that locks in five minutes are not good solutions.”

Based on the data and unique challenges found in the healthcare vertical, the report provides tips to ensure insurability mitigation and resilience for organizations. Some of the topics covered include botnets and healthcare as well as why healthcare data is so valuable. It also examines how healthcare organizations should protect themselves when 60% of their breaches come from vendors.

Over 40 million healthcare records were exposed or compromised for the second consecutive year in 2020, according to the Data Breach Barometer Report. These statistics are alarming because healthcare records are being sold on the dark web for premium prices.

The healthcare industry is a whole economy in itself because of the large number of financial transactions. The healthcare institutes are also migrating their data to cloud servers to make it easily accessible. However, this shift is also causing them to lose trillion dollars worth of health records in data breaches.

You can download the full report here and if you are interested in learning more about the best practices, you can connect with security leaders in the BreachQuest Qmunity.

About BreachQuest

BreachQuest, based in Dallas, Texas, says it is reimagining incident response with an elite team of cybersecurity veterans, including former NSA, DoD and US Cyber Command operators that have serviced more than 40 percent of the Fortune 100. BreachQuest was founded in response to the growing threat of ransomware, offering organizations the ability to minimize the cost and downtime associated with breaches through a re-engineered approach to incident response and recovery. Built around the proprietary PRIORI Platform, BreachQuest improves organizations’ security posture with automated end-to-end readiness and response capabilities which enhances cyber resilience and reduces attacker dwell time.

To learn more about BreachQuest click HERE

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