More Than 3 Million Patient Records Breached During Q2 2018

A new study by data security vendor Protenus has concluded that more than 3 million patient records were breached during the second quarter of 2018, in a sharp swing upward from the previous quarter with no obvious explanation.

The Protenus Breach Barometer study, which drew on both reports to HHS and media disclosures, found that there were 143 data breach incidents between April and June 2018, affecting 3,143,642 million patient records. The number of affected records has almost tripled from Q1 of this year, when 1.13 million records were breached.

During this quarter, roughly 30% of privacy violations were by healthcare organizations that had previously reported a data breach. The report suggests that it is because they might not have identified existing threats or improved security training for employees either. (It could also be because cyberattackers smell blood in the water.)

Protenus concluded that among hospital teams, an investigator monitors around 4,000 EHR users, and that each was responsible for an average of 2.5 hospitals and 25 cases each. The average case took about 11 days to resolve, which sounds reasonable until you consider how much can happen while systems remain exposed.

With investigators being stretched so thin, not only external attackers but also internal threats become harder to manage. The research found that on average, 9.21 per 1,000 healthcare employees breached patient privacy during the second quarter of this year. This is up from 5.08 employee threats found during Q1 of this year, which the study attributes to better detection methods rather than an increase in events.

All told, Protenus said, insiders were responsible for 31% of the total number of reported breaches for this period. Among incidents where details were disclosed, 422,180 records were breached, or 13.4% of total breached patient records during Q2 2018. The top cause of data breaches was hacking, which accounted for 36.62% of disclosed incidents. A total of 16.2% of incidents involved loss or theft of data, with another 16.2% due to unknown causes.

In tackling insider events, the study sorted such incidents into two groups, “insider error” or “insider wrongdoing.” Its definition for insider error included incidents which had no malicious intent or could otherwise be qualified as human error, while it described the theft of information, snooping in patient files and other cases where employees knowingly violated the law as insider wrongdoing.

Protenus found 25 publicly-disclosed incidents of insider error between April and June 2018. The 14 of which for which details were disclosed affected 343,036 patient records.

Meanwhile, the researchers found 18 incidents involving insider wrongdoing, with 13 events for which data was disclosed. The number of patient records breached as a result of insider wrongdoing climbed substantially over the past two quarters, from 4,597 during Q1 to 70,562 during Q2 of 2018.

As in the first quarter, the largest category of insider-related breaches (71.4%) between April and June 2018 was healthcare employees taking a look at family members’ health records. Other insider wrongdoing incidents including phishing attacks, insider credential sharing, downloading records for sale and identity theft.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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