230,954,151 US Healthcare Records Lost or Stolen Between 2009-2019, Study by PrivacyAffairs Finds
70% of US population affected as the decade sees a 2733% increase in healthcare data breaches
LONDON, September 9, 2020 (Newswire.com) - Attacks on healthcare organizations between 2009 and 2019 have resulted in the majority of Americans falling victim to a data breach. Researchers at online privacy website PrivacyAffairs.com collected details of the healthcare data breaches over the past decade for their Healthcare Data Breach Statistics study.
The study revealed the following worrying facts:
- 3,054 data breaches of healthcare records
- 230,954,151 healthcare records lost, stolen, or exposed
- 70% of the US population affected by healthcare data breaches
The researchers studied a number of data sets to analyse trends in healthcare data breaches and comment on where healthcare providers are failing to adequately protect individuals’ private data.
Healthcare hacking incidents have grown steadily each year since 2009, and almost doubled between 2018 and 2019.
The incredible amount of compromised data, affecting such a huge number of people is extremely worrying for cyber security professionals, and has resulted in large fines being levied to the organizations holding the data.
Link to the full study: https://www.privacyaffairs.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics
Largest number of breached records in 2015
The worst year for overall number of healthcare records exposed was 2015. This is primarily due to the Anthem Inc. data breach that exposed personally identifiable medical records of 28.8 million people.
Biggest healthcare data breaches of the decade
The researchers investigated the ten biggest healthcare data breaches of the past decade. The table shows that the single largest breach affected more individuals than the remaining nine, and that in those ten breaches along, more than 138 million Americans’ private healthcare data was lost or stolen.
Organization |
Individuals Affected |
Year |
Anthem Inc. |
78,800,000.00 |
2015 |
Premera Blue Cross |
11,000,000.00 |
2015 |
Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings dba LabCorp |
10,251,784.00 |
2019 |
Excellus Health Plan, Inc. |
10,000,000.00 |
2015 |
Community Health Systems Professional Services Corporations |
6,121,158.00 |
2014 |
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) |
4,900,000.00 |
2011 |
University of California, Los Angeles Health |
4,500,000.00 |
2015 |
Community Health Systems Professional Services Corporation |
4,500,000.00 |
2014 |
Advocate Health and Hospitals Corporation, d/b/a Advocate Medical Group |
4,029,530.00 |
2013 |
Medical Informatics Engineering |
3,900,000.00 |
2015 |
Cybersecurity needs to be baked into the fabric of healthcare systems
PrivacyAffairs stated several reasons for the frequency of attacks targeting healthcare organizations.
“Hospitals in particular are extremely vulnerable to cyber attack due to many using outdated computer systems…"
"Due to the vast number of connected devices in hospitals, the logistical challenge for IT-teams is often too great for proper cyber security maintenance…"
"Medical staff need to have access to patient data, but the additional training costs and time constraints often mean that the people who access the network are ill equipped to keep it secure."
The general public needs to be aware of how prevalent healthcare data breaches are, and take any steps they can to reduce their data footprint.
The Healthcare Data Breach Statistics research can be found at: https://www.privacyaffairs.com/healthcare-data-breach-statistics
Contact
Joe Robinson
joe@privacyaffairs.com
Source: PrivacyAffairs
