Human Error Behind 5 'High-Profile' Healthcare Data Breaches

Over the last few years, the healthcare industry has become an extremely popular target amongst cyber criminals. Serving as a gold mine of valuable data, this industry has attracted the interest of malicious actors worldwide. According to an article by Heath IT Security, hospitals account for 30% of all large data breaches. With so many high-profile cyber attacks on healthcare institutions recently, the growing significance of cyber security in the healthcare industry has become glaringly clear.

From disrupting the workings of high-traffic hospitals for ransom to selling sensitive healthcare data on the dark web, cyber criminals are going all out to fill their pockets at the expense of healthcare institutions. According to Experian, medical records can be sold for up to $1000 on the dark web. An article by HIPAA Journal reports that 28,756,445 healthcare records were exposed in 2020. Can you imagine the extent of the impact these data breaches have?

Cyber criminals are becoming increasingly creative when it comes to finding new ways of bypassing the security of the target organizations. More often than not, they target the weakest and most vulnerable link in an organization's cyber security chain. Do you know what that is?Well, it's your employees! Yes, you read that right. According to a study by IBM, 95% of cyber security breaches are primarily caused by human error. Being unaware of the proper security protocols and cyber security best practices, your employees can inadvertently grant hackers access to your network and systems. Despite having cutting-edge IT security infrastructure, several renowned healthcare organizations have fallen victim to devastating cyber attacks and data breaches due to human error.

Find out the most grievous healthcare data breaches of all times caused by human errors by clicking the link mentioned in the comment section.