Data breaches are still on the rise in healthcare. 2021 accumulated 686 healthcare data breaches of 500 or more records in 2021, resulting in 45M exposed or stolen healthcare records. 2022 is off to a poor start with over 3.7M healthcare records compromised as of 3/2/2022.

HIPAA requires covered entities and business associates to secure protected health information (PHI). Failing to do so can result in steep fines and penalties. Some PHI breaches, however, are out of the organization’s control. Determined hackers can expose PHI, and employees can make mistakes — they’re only human, Despite training, rigorous security protocols, and constant monitoring, data breaches can happen.

The past few years have emphasized just how important cybersecurity is. As cybercrime reached record heights and more companies went digital, industries realized their current security efforts fell short. Healthcare is a prime example. The medical sector has had the second highest number of data breaches of any industry for more than five years. This became increasingly noticeable in 2019 alone, when the industry experienced 525 data breaches, up from 369 the year before.

While the last two years accelerated digital transformation across a wide range of industries, this has been a long time coming for healthcare. Healthcare has been undergoing a massive shift to improve security, streamline operations, and enhance the patient experience—and much of that shift centers around the movement to the cloud. Cloud-native ostensibly offers a better, more accessible user experience marked by enhanced uptime, reliability, and efficiency.

Forescout’s Vedere Labs, in partnership with CyberMDX, have discovered a set of seven new vulnerabilities affecting PTC’s Axeda agent, which we are collectively calling Access:7. Three of the vulnerabilities were rated critical by CISA, as they could enable hackers to remotely execute malicious code and take full control of devices, access sensitive data or alter configurations in impacted devices.

Ideally, healthcare would be the last industry to be targeted by hackers and cyberattackers—surely no one would want to cripple critical hospital infrastructure and play around with lives. However, the healthcare industry continues to be the most affected in terms of average data breach cost, peaking at $9.2 million in 2021.

The healthcare industry suffers some of the highest volumes of cyberattacks and there are whispers of a lot more to come. Combine this trend with breach damage costs surpassing all other industries and you get the thunderous warning of a devastating cyberattack storm approaching the sector. To help healthcare entities strengthen their cyber resilience, we’ve compiled a list of some of the biggest data breaches in the healthcare industry, ordered by degree of impact.

Clinical trial monitors are vital to the efficient collection of high-quality data. They deploy trial information and protocol amendments from the sponsor to the sites, which ensures study progress. They also support endpoint analysis by collecting source data and by verifying adherence to the trial protocol.

This blog was written by an independent guest blogger.

Digital transformation puts all industries at greater risk of cyber attacks, and the healthcare industry is no exception. As US healthcare organizations increase their reliance on health information technology for purposes such as data sharing, process automation, and system interoperability, their attack surface expands rapidly. This rapidly multiplying number of attack vectors increases cybersecurity risk considerably.