Incident Details
Chances are, you have received at least one unsettling letter in your mailbox this year stating that a cybersecurity incident has occurred. This is a standard notification that many healthcare entities are obligated to send out when there is a breach of protected health information. In 2023, there was a significant increase in the number of these notifications being issued, attributed to the rise in data leaks, hacks, and mishandling incidents.
According to the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services, records show that as many as 116 million individuals have been affected by major breaches of health data reported this year. This figure has more than doubled compared to previous counts, mainly due to a sharp increase in hacking and ransomware attacks targeting healthcare organizations governed by the HIPAA privacy rule.