No industry or sector is immune to hacking. That reality was made painfully clear in mid-May, when a cyberattacker using WannaCry ransomware crippled health care institutions and many other kinds of organizations around the world. In 2015 over 113 million Americans health records were exposed, and in 2016 the number was over 16 million, according to reports submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office for Civil Rights. At the beginning of 2017 Experian predicted that the health care sector would be the most heavily targeted vertical industry. A March 2017 report from the Identity Theft Resource Center indicated that more than 25% of all data breaches were related to health care. The estimated loss to the industry is $5.6 billion per year. These stats should be a wake-up call for the entire industry.
11 Things the Health Care Sector Must Do to Improve Cybersecurity
No industry or sector is immune to hacking. That reality was made painfully clear in mid-May, when a cyberattacker using WannaCry ransomware crippled health care institutions and many other kinds of organizations around the world. Some of the most well-known examples of cyberattacks in the last decade have included the mass theft of millions of credit and debit cards numbers, the penetration of sensitive bank systems, and the manipulation of stock trading and other capital markets-related violations. This turmoil led to huge operational shifts in the financial services sector, where there’s more focus than ever on consumer education, industry information-sharing, and stronger forms of authentication, among other things. By comparison, health care is behind in its security readiness. There are 11 lessons that the health care sector can learn from financial services organizations.