As a new story about hospital ransomware or a stolen laptop containing PHI seemingly emerges every day, it comes as no surprise that healthcare data breaches have steadily increased in frequency and severity since 2010. Read about new study by Ponemon Institute which reveals that the health care data breaches are going to cost about 6.2 billion dollars to the industry
It's The Employees, Stupid
Despite the prevalence of cybersecurity incidents, the study showed that the majority of healthcare organizations and business associates were most concerned with negligent or careless employees causing healthcare data breaches.
When asked what the greatest threat was to healthcare data security, the majority of healthcare organizations stated employee inaction or error (69 percent). Rounding out the top three concerns were cybercriminals at 45 percent and the use of insecure mobile devices at 36 percent.
Employee error was also the top concern for business associates (53 percent), followed by use of cloud services (46 percent) and cyberattacks (36 percent). More at Health IT Security.
Ransomware For Hospitals
KnowBe4 just released a training module specifically for hospitals, as they are currently actively targeted by cyber criminals, penetrating their networks and locking patient files with crypto-ransomware so that no data is accessible for any hospital worker. This short (7-minute) module gives anyone working in a hospital the basics of ransomware, email security and Red Flags they need to watch out for to help prevent very expensive attacks like this. More at KnowBe4.
Find Out The Phish Prone Percentage Of Your Employees
One thing is clear, effective security awareness training is a must these days. You can start with a baseline test, to find out what the phish-prone percentage of your employees is. Often higher than expected, but great ammo to get budget. There is no cost for this Phishing Security Test.
