Security News > 2021 > February > Rising healthcare breaches driven by hacking and unsecured servers
Analyzing data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, threat protection company Bitglass found that the count of healthcare breaches reported in 2020 increased to 599, a jump of more than 50% compared to the previous year.
Most of the breaches were caused by hacking and IT incidents, which exposed data from 24.1 million individuals, making them vulnerable to identity theft and phishing attacks.
Looking at the states that had the largest count of individuals affected, Michigan ranks first, mostly because of a single incident at the Trinity Health healthcare delivery system, which impacted 3.3 individuals.
According to the Ponemon Institute, breaches affecting healthcare organizations are the most expensive to deal with and have the longest recovery time.
Maze, Ryuk, REvil, SunCrypt, Snake, and Clop are just some of the ransomware groups that attacked hospitals and healthcare organizations.
At the end of October 2020, the U.S. Government released a warning about Ryuk ransomware attacks targeting hospitals and healthcare providers.