Healthcare data breaches continue unabated

PARCA eNews – Aug. 23, 2021 – The US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights data shows that healthcare data breaches involving more than 500 records continues on an average rate of two per day.

The OCR is currently investigating over 830 such breaches dating back to September 2019.

Over this past summer millions of patient records have been compromised with the highest numbers of breached records reported by Forefront Dermatology, S.C. (2.4 million), St. Joseph’s/Candlier Health System in Georgia (1.4 million), University Medical Center Southern Nevada (1.3 million) and UF Health Central Florida (700,981).
Ransomeware attacks continue to be the attack of choice for hackers, with double extortion attacks growing rapidly. These are attacks that demand organizations pay to prevent publication or sale of stolen data in addition to paying to decrypt files.

There were 52 such attacks just in July. By contrast there were only 13 data breaches reported that were attributed to unauthorized access or disclosure.

Source: US HHS Office for Civil Rights breach data and HIPAA Journal