#7: Year of the Cyber Attacks
What was once a problem for retailers like Target, Neiman Marcus, and Home Depot became a top priority for the Healthcare industry in 2015. Accenture warned that cyber-attacks will cost the Healthcare industry $305 billion over the next 5 years. The FBI warned of the industry’s susceptibility to attacks back in 2014 stating that cyber criminals earn 10x more for stolen health insurance credentials compared to credit card information. In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services released a report outlining how hackers accessed more than 100 million health records in 2015 alone.
Some of those attacks include:
- January 2015 –Premera Blue Cross impacting 11 million records
- February 2015 – Anthem, Inc. impacting 78.8 million records
- May 2015 – UCLA Healthcare impacting 4.5 million records
- May 2015 – Medical Informatics Engineering impacting 3.9 million records
- August 2015 – Excellus BlueCross BlueShield impacted 10 million records
A 2015 KPMG Healthcare Cybersecurity survey of 223 Health IT executives found that 13% were targeted by external hacker attempts about once a day and 12% saw two or more attacks per week. Lastly, 16% of healthcare organizations said they cannot detect in real-time when their systems are compromised.