🛡️ Pen Testing Best Practices for the Healthcare Industry
Healthcare firms should be concerned about the security of their sector. According to one study, only around half of healthcare firms dedicate a portion of their IT budget to healthcare in cybersecurity. The larger picture suggests that just around half of healthcare organizations must properly allocate resources to protect patients’ data. In today’s ever-changing cyber world, healthcare businesses face a plethora of possible security risks, particularly those aimed at personal data. Given this year’s significant spike in occurrences, healthcare organizations should invest in healthcare penetration Testing to secure data and applications.
In this blog, we’ll take a deep dive into the cyber threats in the healthcare industry and the best practices on how penetration testing can help overcome them. We’ll also go through HIPAA compliance and its importance.
Why is the Healthcare Industry Prone to Data Breaches?
Healthcare IT teams are responsible for securing hospital applications and medical facilities from cyberattacks, but they confront several challenges in hardening their vast attack surface. The healthcare industry, which houses a plethora of sensitive consumer patient data and IoMT devices, is an excellent target for attackers, notably ransomware assaults.
According to 2022 research, ransomware affected 66% of healthcare businesses in 2022. It also found that 61% of respondents with encrypted data were willing to pay the ransom, compared to 46% in other industries.
Furthermore, these numbers demonstrate the significance of a continual vulnerability management approach that fixes cybersecurity holes and segments applications to resist ransomware assaults. The following are the top healthcare data breach figures for 2023-2024:
- According to HIPAA, healthcare data breaches in the United States have fallen by 48%.
- Ransomware attacks caused a rise in medical issues in 36% of healthcare institutions.
- Healthcare cybersecurity receives 4-7% of the health system’s IT budget.
- Negligent personnel are responsible for 61% of healthcare data breach threats.
- According to a report, the healthcare industry saw almost 337 breaches in the first half of 2022 alone.
- According to another report, the 337 documented healthcare events affected 19,992,810 people.
- Hacking accounted for 80% of reported healthcare breaches by US HSS, with unauthorized access accounting for the remaining 15%.
The statistics can be overwhelming if you’re into the healthcare business. We know how to solve this. Penetration testing can help you overcome healthcare threats. Discover a Free call with security experts today!
