Healthcare data breach statistics show hacking is now the leading cause of healthcare data breaches worldwide, according to the official HIPAA Journal. Did you know in the past 10 years more than 2500 healthcare breaches, including 365 in the past year alone, were reported? These breaches exposed 189.9 Million healthcare records in the USA only, which’s more than 59% of the United States population. The numbers of exposed records are doubling year after year, from 5 million records in 2017 to 13 million records in 2018 of which 10 million records were stolen only through hacking.
71% of hacking attacks by cybercriminals target small to medium sized practices, as most of them are vulnerable due to the lack of resources and protocols of larger firms. A good part of the problem is just a basic lack of understanding of HIPAA. Companies that deal with protected health information (PHI) must have physical, network, and process security measures in place and follow them to ensure HIPAA Compliance.
If you’re one of these healthcare facilities, lack of education and safety measures will not protect your practice or client’s information if you’ve ever got breached. And the penalties for HIPAA violations can be severe like having to spend thousands of dollars in lawsuits or worse getting your medical license revoked.
All of this can be avoided just by investing in your IT security, which is less than quarter of what you’ll have to pay for a single violation.
Just as patients entrust their physicians with their health, they also entrust their healthcare organizations with their data, and it is the duty of these organizations to take care of their protected health information. Cybercriminal attacks are like a spreading virus that need prevention, treatment and follow up plans to help maintain them under control. Let us help you fight this infection by coming in and providing a free assessment to help you see where you companies need to improve to reduce risk.