Health Care Breaches Are in Critical Condition

While there’s a lot of excitement about the potential benefits of cloud and mobile computing in the enterprise, the fact remains that the introduction of new technologies is exacerbating security issues in health care organizations that are already hard pressed to secure patient data.

A new report, conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of ID Experts, based on interviews with IT and health care professionals across 80 health care organizations, finds health care security appears to be deteriorating at an alarming rate.

Click through for findings from a heath care security survey, conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of ID Experts, a provider of data protection software.

Ninety-four percent of responding hospitals suffered a data breach, with 45 percent suffering more than five breaches.

Over 21 million patients have been affected thus far, with 1.85 million patients victimized in 2012 alone.

$7 billion at a time when health care costs are a major political issue.

It costs millions of dollars per breach. The annual cost of medical identity theft tops $40 billion.

Lost or stolen device edges out employee error.

No controls in place.

Cloud and mobile significantly increase risks.

Budgets and lack of resources are the primary culprits.