If your healthcare data hasn’t been breached in 2024, then you either don’t know it yet or should consider yourself very lucky.
That’s because 2024 was a nightmare year for healthcare institutions and patients in the U.S. A total of 184,111,469 records were breached. That’s 53% of the 2024 population of the United States.
This staggering figure represents a significant increase from previous years, setting a new and alarming record in healthcare data breaches.
The healthcare sector faced unprecedented challenges in cybersecurity, with attacks becoming more frequent, sophisticated and damaging than ever before.
Being admitted to a hospital is stressful enough. It caused additional stress for the 100 million clients of Change Healthcare, whose data was exposed following a breach orchestrated by the BlackCat ransomware group. Not only did the breach expose sensitive health information, but it also caused widespread disruptions in claims processing. Patients and providers across the country faced chaos as the breach impacted their ability to access and pay for healthcare services.
The second significant breach occurred at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, where the personal data of 13.4 million individuals was compromised. This breach involved unauthorized access and the use of tracking technologies that transmitted user interactions to third parties.