Cyber Attacks Continue to Plague Hospitals

Cybersecurity continues to be a huge topic, with many sessions at HIMSS17 devoted to the subject of keeping your health system data safe. An HIMSS Analytics Security and Risk Management Study surveyed 100 hospital IT leaders and found 50% were subject to an external cyber attack in the last 12 months.

Health data attracts criminals because it contains all the information they want: social security numbers, addresses, next of kin, etc.

While health systems are putting more focus on cybersecurity, they still struggle with training and affording IT professionals. There have been increases in staffing. However, healthcare still lags behind other data-sensitive industries such as finance in its implementation of security measures.

On a positive note, clinicians stated they wanted more cybersecurity training to keep patient data safe.

The infographic below, created by Symantec, summarizes the issues and gives five tips for keeping healthcare data and PHI secure: