Confirming what we are seeing in the field, the Ponemon Institute recently released a new report of a poll of 535 healthcare IT and IT security professionals that sets forth a dismal state of affairs around data security and intrusions in health care organizations.
The report states that 48 percent of the IT professionals that responded to the survey indicated that their organization had suffered a breach involving patient information in the last year. Further, only 33 percent of those responding rated their organizations’ cybersecurity measures as very effective.
The research concludes that healthcare organizations are hit by a cyber-attack almost once a month, and the IT professionals do not have the resources necessary to adequately secure the systems and data. The respondents stated that due to a lack of resources, it is difficult to maintain effective strategies around data security. The most common security incident cited by the IT practitioners was exploits of existing software vulnerabilities and web-borne malware attacks.
The Ponemon Institute also recently issued a report on the cost of breaches caused by mobile devices. Both reports are worth the read, and as always, very well done.
