“Once federal regulators confirm the details, the recent cyberattack on Banner Health Care, which may have compromised the data of as many as 3.7 million individuals, likely will be the largest healthcare data breach reported so far in 2016 – a year that’s seen a string of disturbing hacker attacks in the sector.
For example, a series of organizations have been targeted with ransomware attacks. One hacker claimed to offer 10 million stolen records for sale on the dark web. And a long list of organizations discovered they were victimized by the hacking of a records software vendor.
Massive health data breaches “are not going away anytime soon and, in fact, they will get worse,” says Jay Trinckes, director of security consulting firm Coalfire’s healthcare and life sciences practice. “As hackers become more sophisticated and organizations try to play catch up, we will see more reports of these types of breaches. Until organizations place a higher, ongoing emphasis on security, our private healthcare data will be at risk.””
Author: Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, @HealthInfoSec