Healthcare breaches by ransomware increase year-over-year[source: helpnetsecurity]

2017 has been a very challenging year for healthcare institutions as these organizations remain under sustained attack by cybercriminals that continue to target their networks.

healthcare breaches involving ransomware

End of year research conducted by Cryptonite indicates that there were a total of 140 data breach events characterized and reported to HHS/OCR as IT/hacking in 2017 representing a 23.89% increase over the 113 IT/hacking events reported in 2016.

The number of reported major IT/hacking events attributed to ransomware by healthcare institutions increased by 89% from 2016 to 2017. This was an increase from 19 reported events in 2016 to a total of 36 events in 2017. In 2017 ransomware events represented 25% of all events reported to HHS/OCR and attributed to IT/hacking. All 6 of the 6 largest IT/hacking healthcare events reported in 2017 were attributed to ransomware.

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