Cybersecurity news for hospitals and health systems

Healthcare data breaches are on the rise, with health plans accounting for the largest share of breached records at 63 percent from 2010-17.

Amazon has acquired Israeli disaster-recovery startup CloudEndure, Reuters reports. CloudEndure offers continuous backup and cloud migration services to help businesses move their data to the cloud.

Protenus, a healthcare compliance analytics platform, entered into a strategic partnership with Radar, a provider of incident response management software.

Two separate data breaches disclosed in December 2018 exposed the protected health information of 31,876 plan members of Managed Health Services, which runs Indiana's Hoosier Healthwise and Hoosier Care Connect Medicaid programs, according to HIPAA Journal.

Humana recently mailed data breach notification letters to 684 members informing them that a hacker had accessed a vendor's systems as early as May 2018.

A health services provider used by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan experienced a ransomware attack in September 2018, according to a sample letter obtained by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which contracts with BCBS of Michigan.

To address the growing rate of cyberattacks against the healthcare industry, HHS released a 30-plus page report outlining best practices hospitals can use to protect patient data.

Numerous privacy incidents at hospitals, IT suppliers and other healthcare organizations captured public attention last month.

After a hospital suffers a data breach, advertising expenditures tend to increase 64 percent, according to a study published in The American Journal of Managed Care Dec. 21.

Stephanie Domas, vice president of research at MedSec, a cybersecurity risk management provider in Miami, discusses cyberattacks on connected medical devices and the preventative actions health systems can take.