Here are nine statistics to know about healthcare data breaches:
- Healthcare is one of the most highly targeted industries for cyberattacks, with hospitals representing the victims of 30 percent of large data breaches.
- Nearly 50 million Americans had their protected health information breached in 2021, a threefold increase in three years.
- In 2021, the share of residents whose protected health information was exposed in a data breach was 10 percent or higher in 22 states.
- The number of reported healthcare breaches in 2021 increased by 19 percent. There were 905 reported in 2021 compared to 758 in 2020.
- Midsize hospitals report that a cyberattack creates an average shutdown time of 10 hours that costs on average $45,700 per hour.
- Hacking accounted for 74 percent of all healthcare data breaches in 2021, up from 35 percent in 2016.
- About 5 percent of cyberattacks are motivated by fun. The motive for 91 percent of hackers is financially driven. Another 4 percent of attacks are motivated by espionage.
- More than 50 percent of the most commonly used internet-connected hospital devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks.
- A February HHS threat brief outlined 18 identifiers that “provide criminals with more information than any other breached record.” They include Social Security numbers, health plan beneficiary numbers and biometric identifiers.
