Healthcare contributors accounted for 16 percent of all data violations in California previous year and almost one-quarter were the result of hacking and malware, in accordance to a new report released in the month of February.
The 2016 California Data Breach Report from the state Attorney General's Office discovered the healthcare sector was 3rd only to retail (25%) and finance (18%) as the most susceptible to breaches. The healthcare sector was also cited as doing a worst job of encrypting data that is often stolen in physical violations, although it has made better its security in the past 2 years.
"The [healthcare] industry appears to be making better on its utilization of encryption to secure data on laptops and other portable devices, but there is still a long way to go in dealing this preventable kind of breach," wrote state Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Physical breaches, like lost or stolen computers and drives, were still the dominant type of breach in healthcare, accounting for 39 percent of all healthcare breaches in the year 2015 compared to just 13 percent in other business sectors. The report notes that "physical breaches have denied in healthcare the past 2 years," from a high of 72 percent of all healthcare sector breaches in the year 2013.
But the refusal in physical breaches previous year was offset by an increase in malware attacks and hacking, which accounted for 21 percent of data breaches in healthcare in the year 2015 compared to just 5 percent in the year 2013. The report recommends the trend is likely to sustain as the healthcare industry transitions to EHRs and the use of wireless portable devices.
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