Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 May 13;8(2):133.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare8020133.

Healthcare Data Breaches: Insights and Implications

Adil Hussain Seh  1 , Mohammad Zarour  2 , Mamdouh Alenezi  2 , Amal Krishna Sarkar  1   3 , Alka Agrawal  1 , Rajeev Kumar  1 , Raees Ahmad Khan  1
Affiliations
Review

Healthcare Data Breaches: Insights and Implications

Adil Hussain Seh et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

The Internet of Medical Things, Smart Devices, Information Systems, and Cloud Services have led to a digital transformation of the healthcare industry. Digital healthcare services have paved the way for easier and more accessible treatment, thus making our lives far more comfortable. However, the present day healthcare industry has also become the main victim of external as well as internal attacks. Data breaches are not just a concern and complication for security experts; they also affect clients, stakeholders, organizations, and businesses. Though the data breaches are of different types, their impact is almost always the same. This study provides insights into the various categories of data breaches faced by different organizations. The main objective is to do an in-depth analysis of healthcare data breaches and draw inferences from them, thereby using the findings to improve healthcare data confidentiality. The study found that hacking/IT incidents are the most prevalent forms of attack behind healthcare data breaches, followed by unauthorized internal disclosures. The frequency of healthcare data breaches, magnitude of exposed records, and financial losses due to breached records are increasing rapidly. Data from the healthcare industry is regarded as being highly valuable. This has become a major lure for the misappropriation and pilferage of healthcare data. Addressing this anomaly, the present study employs the simple moving average method and the simple exponential soothing method of time series analysis to examine the trend of healthcare data breaches and their cost. Of the two methods, the simple moving average method provided more reliable forecasting results.

Keywords: cost effectiveness; cost forecasting; data analysis; data breach forecasting; data confidentiality; data security; healthcare data breaches; time series analysis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Representation of Data Breach Incidents.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Proportion of Records Exposed From 2005–2019 with Different Types of Attack.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Proportion of Records Exposed from 2015–2019 with Different Types of Attack.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Graphical Presentation of Different Data Disclosure Types.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Comparative Graphical Representation.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Graphical Comparison of Average Record Cost and Healthcare Record Cost.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Forecasting Graph of Healthcare Data Breaches from 2010–2020 through SMA method.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Forecasting graph of Healthcare Record Cost since 2010–2020 through SMA method.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Forecasting Graph of Healthcare Data Breaches from 2010–2020 using the SES method.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Forecasting graph of Healthcare Record Costs from 2010–2020 Using the SES method.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Benefits of EHRs. [(accessed on 17 January 2020)]; Available online: https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-basics/benefits-ehrs.
    1. Kamoun F., Nicho M. Human and organizational factors of healthcare data breaches: The Swiss cheese model of data breach causation and prevention. Int. J. Healthc. Inf. Syst. Inform. 2014;9:42–60. doi: 10.4018/ijhisi.2014010103. - DOI
    1. Smith T.T. Examining Data Privacy Breaches in Healthcare. [(accessed on 12 May 2020)]; Available online: https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir....
    1. Chernyshev M., Zeadally S., Baig Z. Healthcare data breaches: Implications for digital forensic Readiness. J. Med. Syst. 2019;43:7. doi: 10.1007/s10916-018-1123-2. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Liu V., Musen M.A., Chou T. Data breaches of protected health information in the United States. JAMA. 2015;313:1471–1473. doi: 10.1001/jama.2015.2252. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources