81% of healthcare companies are looking to increase their investing in cyber security, an increase from 60% last year. As most of us have probably heard, there has been a wave of recent ransomware and cyber security attacks against the health care industry. Although seeing breaches of healthcare companies in the news might make it seem like the companies are enduring waves of attacks, only “18% of global healthcare companies said they had a breach in the past 12 months,” much less than the “43% of companies in the retail sector.”
In addition to the increase spending, there has been increased regulations and audits around the security of the healthcare companies’ information systems. Recently, the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas was penalized $3.2 million for not adhering to the recommendation of encrypting patient records. In another example, Memorial Healthcare System had to pay $5 million dollars for data breaches.
Healthcare companies are becoming cognizant of the lack of information system controls, driving compliance to become the focus in security spending. This is an important point, as by increasing controls, healthcare companies will be taking a pro-active approach in dealing with cyber security, instead of the standard reactive one.
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