Potential cyber-attacks can cause millions of dollars in damages, and they can only be evaded with a multipronged data storage strategy
Key Takeaways:
- Healthcare organizations have always been a target for hackers trying to steal private data
- Online healthcare data breaches have recently become even more frequent, resulting in a significant rise in financial losses to medical organizations.
- The average healthcare data breach cost to organizations has reached up to $9.42 million per incident.
- In order to cope with the rise in cyberattacks, healthcare organizations need a medical data storage system that is breach-proof and completely secure.
Healthcare data breaches are a menace that can cost medical organizations millions of dollars. In addition to costing hefty sums, data breaches can also make patients lose faith in the healthcare facility that couldn’t take care of their private information.
Medical organizations can block any cyberattacks and data breach attempts by ensuring they have a highly secure data storage system. A well-encrypted data storage system is becoming increasingly important to the business health of medical facilities.
Why are healthcare organizations a prime target for hackers?
Hackers are more likely to target the healthcare sector to get access to medical data. The value of the information associated with the data is high because hackers can use the information to blackmail patients. They can also use the data for identity theft or sell it on the dark web. Many healthcare organizations still use outdated storage systems, which makes them easy targets.
There is another reason for the increase in healthcare data breaches, as well. The pandemic forced many healthcare employees to work remotely. This change in the way medical organizations operated meant that rapid technological shifts had to be implemented in view of the changing paradigms. However, these rapid transformations introduced many vulnerabilities in the system and, as a result, data security was compromised. This led to an increase in the volume of cyberattacks.
How much does it cost? The impact of data breaches on healthcare organizations
A cyberattack resulting in sensitive patient data breaches can have a two-fold impact on the concerned healthcare organization.
Firstly, it can result in huge costs from fines and patient compensation because the data breach can be seen as an act of negligence by the medical organization. A breach can mean the healthcare facility did not comply with established data storage standards, which made the patient data vulnerable to unauthorized access.
IBM started publishing data breach cost reports 17 years ago. Their latest data breach statistics suggest that there has been a 10% year-over-year increase in the costs incurred. These costs are currently at an all-time high. As far as medical data breaches are concerned, the average cost has increased from $2 million to $9.24 million per incident.
A spokesperson from IBM Security said that higher data breach costs are proving to be an added burden for organizations. Forced by the pandemic, many healthcare organizations are already in the process of shifting to new technologies and additional data breach costs are not something these organizations can afford.
The second important impact of a data breach can also be a worrying one: Medical organizations are also likely to lose loyal patients. A data breach can inevitably result in the loss of patient trust and confidence in the organization they are dealing with. After all, how can you protect them from illness when you can’t even protect their medical information from hackers?
An Experian survey found that more than 70% of patients trust their healthcare providers to be responsible for the protection of their personal health information. Don’t fail that trust.
Tips to protect your business and patients from data-breaches
To start, healthcare organizations must make their staff and patients understand the importance of having strong passwords that cannot be easily hacked. The passwords should also be protected in a way that they cannot be accessible to anyone. Data breaches that involve passwords, usernames, and emails can have progressively more detrimental consequences because most people use the same passwords across different platforms.
An effective data security approach that healthcare organizations can employ is the zero-trust strategy. This approach signifies the importance of always verifying an access request regardless of where the request is originating from or what resource it is using. Healthcare organizations should also ensure that their data storage systems are compliant with all the concerned rules and regulations, such as HIPAA.
Additionally, and importantly, organizations that have been most successful in implementing secure data storage systems are the ones that have employed the latest technologies to prevent data breaches. These technologies include:
- Artificial intelligence-based data systems security solutions: In this technology, artificial intelligence algorithms use data to keep the system up to date in a way that does not leave any vulnerabilities open for a cyberattack to be effective.
- Security analytics: This technology employs a close analysis of data involving human expertise to devise proactive measures for enhancing cybersecurity.
- Encryption: Encryption is an important tool in online data security. It is used to conceal digital information by changing it in a way that it appears to be random data.
According to IBM, the above three technologies alone can save costs in the range of $1.25 million to $1.49 million per data breach.
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