Unsecured Servers Responsible For The Rising Incidents of Breaches on Healthcare Institutions
2020 proved a particularly challenging year for healthcare organizations in the U.S. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a record-high in the number of cybersecurity incidents. These incidents which were hacking and IT-related accounted for more than 67% of all breaches and exposed the personal data of tens of millions of individuals in the healthcare industry last year.
Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, gotten by threat protection company Bitglass found that there was a jump from 386 to 599 for reported healthcare breaches between 2019 and 2020; this accounted for a more than 50% increase. These breaches were caused by IT and hacking incidents and exposed data from 24,117,842 million individuals, making them vulnerable to identity theft and phishing attacks. The total number of affected individuals is however lower than the numbers in 2019 (23,862,875).
A subsequent breakdown per state shows California leading the table with the highest number of Hacking and IT cases with 49; Texas follows in second with 4; while New York has 39 breaches, Florida and Pennsylvania have 38 breaches each.
Breaches affecting healthcare organizations are the most expensive to deal with and have the longest recovery time, according to the Ponemon Institute. The average cost per breach record in 2020 was $499, with recovery taking about 236 days. Healthcare institutions also take the longest to identify a breach when compared to other institutions, with the average time taken being 96 days.
Notably, the report by Bitglass does not breakdown the hacking incidents by their type, it is however widely believed that ransomware attacks take up a high percentage of all breaches. Maze, Ryuk, REvil (Sodinokibi), SunCrypt, Snake, and Clop are some on the list of ransomware groups that attacked the healthcare institute.
Subsequently, a report from Check Point earlier this year named Ryuk and REvil as the top two ransomware groups that attacked the healthcare group at a global level.
Ransomware attacks did trickle towards the end of 2020, with organizations paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure their online activities returned to normal.
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