Healthcare remains a prime target of cybercriminals in 2023 and there’s no sign of this trend weakening in the years to come. In the first six-months of 2023 alone, 325 covered entities have reported data breaches to the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR). This represents an 86% increase from the same period in 2022 and a rise of 33% from the prior half-year. This equates to 41.5 million individuals affected in H1 2023.
If the growth isn’t staggering enough, a new phenomenon has emerged: class action lawsuits. According to a recent study by Bloomberg Law, the monthly average of new class actions filed over health data breaches has doubled since last year. In addition to the OCR imposing fines, entities are now facing millions of dollars in legal and settlement fees.
Want more shocking statistics? In an independent Ponemon Institute study, ‘Cyber Insecurity in Healthcare: The Cost and Impact on Patient Safety and Care’, 24% of respondents indicated that a recent ransomware attack led to an increased mortality rate while 64% indicated delays in procedures and tests and 59% said patient duration was longer than necessary.
The Impact of a Healthcare Data Breach by the Numbers
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The time to act is now. If you haven’t been featured on the OCR Breach Report yet, it’s only a matter of time. Resources are scarce, budgets are non-existent, yet your obligation to your patients remains paramount. The expectation your patients have of you is one of vigilance. Do you know where all of the Protected Health Information resides within your system? If you said no, please continue reading.
How Tausight Helps You Know What Unstructured Health Data Needs Protecting
As healthcare’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered electronic protected health information (ePHI) intelligence platform, Tausight gives hospitals, health systems and healthcare providers insight into their ePHI risk and reduces the attack surface for a cybersecurity event by providing visibility to where unstructured ePHI exists outside of the EMR.
Tausight is able to identify old files that may no longer be needed to then reduce risk and reduce storage costs. When this unused data is removed it helps hospitals mitigate the devastating financial impact of a cyber security breach. Tausight is also able to tell when there are file servers that are unencrypted, therefore also helping the organization increase ROI, stay proactive against cyber threats and reduce insurance premiums.
Contact us to learn more about our ePHI location and detection solution for live ePHI surveillance at the edge. Gain ePHI insight across critical cloud and network infrastructure through an agentless executable in minutes.
