The Largest Healthcare Data Breaches So Far in 2018

Healthcare has continued to be a target for hackers in 2018. With continued threats from cyber criminals, it is crucial to take steps in order to better secure healthcare data and patient records. Reviewing previous cyber attacks can help you determine what not to do and learn from the mistakes of others. Here are highlights of just some of the biggest breaches seen in the industry so far this year.

January

The second largest breach this year was a malware attack on St. Peter’s Surgery and Endoscopy Center in New York. The hackers gained access to over 134,000 patient records. The security breach was discovered quickly (same day), which certainly helped in the long run. However, investigators could not be certain that patient records were not stolen.

March

Med Associates, which provides claims services for 70 healthcare providers, faced a security hack of over 270,000 patient records. The hack was discovered when an employee workstation started displaying unusual activity. The investigation confirmed that a cyber hacker did in fact access the workstation, and had the potential to access patient data from there.

LifeBridge Health located in Baltimore, Maryland faced a malware attack that exposed patient information, of over 500,000 patients, for over a year. This information included medical history, treatment information, and insurance data. The malware attack was discovered on March 18 through the detection of an infection on its patient registration and billing server. Investigators found that the hackers gained initial access to the EHR and servers over a year prior.

April

1.4 million patients records may have been breached from a hack on UnityPoint Health. According to investigators, the business system was reached through a phishing attack when a number of emails appearing to be sent from executives came through UnityPoint’s email system.

July

Singapore’s government health database faced a hack, defined by investigators as “deliberate and targeted,” that accessed the information for over 1.5 million patients for almost a full week. The hackers first breached a workstation in order to gain credentials to privileged accounts to then gain access into the database.

Protect your data

Integracon offers healthcare-specific IT solutions in order to protect your data from hackers and breaches. In today’s information technology-intensive healthcare environment, you need to focus on your patients and not on your mission-critical systems.