Servers appear to be the Achilles heel of healthcare organizations’ data protection efforts. About 54 percent of all individuals affected by an information breach of a healthcare organizations were impacted by a breach involving that organization’s server, according to data on the breach portal of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, culling security incidents from June 1, 2018, to May 31, 2019. A report this summer from Clearwater’s CyberIntelligence Institute says that, of the breaches in the previous 12 months, 90 healthcare breaches affecting more than 9 million individuals, were related to servers in some way.
The agency says threat actors are targeting organizations' IT help desks with phone calls from a local area code claiming to be revenue cycle or administrator employees. After gaining access, they divert legitimate payments.
