There are many factors to consider when preparing for and managing a data breach, such as the amount of time it takes to respond to a data breach and the reputational impact it has on your company. Read below to see how breaches happen, view average response times and learn other crucial information.
Almost 60% of UK Consumers Affected by Data Breaches in 2019
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Although data breaches seem more prevalent nowadays because of cloud computing and increased digital storage, they have existed as long as companies have maintained confidential information and private records. However, publicly-disclosed data breaches increased in frequency in the 1980s, and awareness of data breaches grew in the early 2000s.
Most public information on data breaches only dates back to 2005. In 2020, multiple surveys showed that more than half of Americans were concerned about data breaches during natural disasters, as well as personal safety resulting from the pandemic. Data breaches today tend to impact millions of consumers in just one companywide attack.
A data breach occurs when a cybercriminal infiltrates a data source and extracts confidential information. This can be done by accessing a computer or network to steal local files or by bypassing network security remotely. While most data breaches are attributed to hacking or malware attacks, other breach methods include insider leaks, payment card fraud, loss or theft of a physical hard drive of files, and human error. The most common cyber attacks used in data breaches are outlined below.
A: The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse keeps a chronology of data and public security breaches dating back to 2005. The actual number of data breaches is not known. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimated that there have been 9,044 public breaches since 2005, however more can be presumed since the organization does not report on breaches where the number of compromised records is unknown.
As reported by many practitioners, from 2005 to 2019, the total number of individuals affected by healthcare data breaches was 249.09 million. Out of these, 157.40 million individuals were affected in the last five years alone [6]. In the year 2018, the number of data breaches reported was 2216 from 65 countries. Out of these, the healthcare industry faced 536 breaches. This implies that the healthcare industry has faced the highest number of breaches among all industries [7]. There were 2013 data breaches reported from 86 countries in the year 2019 [8]. The total number of healthcare records that were exposed, stolen, or illegally disclosed in the year 2019 was 41.2 million in 505 healthcare data breaches [8]. According to an IBM report, the average cost of a data breach in 2019 was $3.92 million, while a healthcare industry breach typically costs $6.45 million [9]. This cost was the highest in the USA compared to other countries. Usually, a data breach would fetch $8.19 million. However, the average cost of a healthcare data breach (average breach size 25,575 records) in the USA is $15 million [10]. The average cost of a data breach increased by 12% from 2014 to 2019, and the average cost of a breached record increased 3.4% in the same time period. Moreover, the cost of a breached record in the healthcare sector registered an increase of 19.4%, the highest in this time period [10,11,12,13].
The aforementioned facts and figures show that the data assets of individuals and organizations are at risk. Even more alarmingly, the healthcare industry in particular is being targeted by attackers, and is therefore the most vulnerable. Thus, data privacy and confidentiality has become a serious concern for both individuals and organizations. Healthcare data are more sensitive than other types of data because any data tampering can lead to faulty treatment, with fatal and irreversible losses to patients. Hence, healthcare data need enhanced security, and should be breach-proof. In this study, our main concern was to investigate the healthcare data breaches reported or published by different eminent and authentic sources. We aimed to examine the causes of these breaches and use the results to improve healthcare data confidentiality. The analyzed factors that lead to healthcare data breaches will be addressed in our future research work to improve healthcare data confidentiality.
PRC Database: PRC is a US based, non-profit organization established by Beth Givens in 1992. Its main purpose is to protect consumer information, to provide consumer advocacy services and guidelines to control personal information, and to improve consumer awareness about the technological effects of personal privacy. It provides a complete database of data breaches. The database has a record of 9016 data breach instances reported by different organizations. According to the PRC database, more than 10 billion user records have been compromised since 2005.
HIPAA Journal: The HIPAA journal is an effective outcome of the HIPAA Act 1996. It is a US-based journal that provides comprehensive information about healthcare data breaches, guidelines for HIPAA compliance, and practical guidelines for data breach avoidance. It has been providing comprehensive information about healthcare data breaches since September 2009.
Verizon-DBIR: Data breach investigation reports by Verizon Enterprises comprise yearly investigations reports on data breaches. The first such report was published in 2008. The reports record instances of data invasion in private as well as public organizations across the world.
Data breaches can harm individuals and organizations in several ways. Besides the huge financial setback that organizations have to deal with in cases of data pilferage, such instances also dent the image of the organizations, marring their reputation and brand value. Data breaches are usually classified into two major categories: internal and external. Internal data breaches comprise incidents that are occur with the help of an internal agent. These may be privilege abuse, inauthentic access/disclosure, improper disposal of unnecessary but sensitive data, loss or theft, or the unintentional sharing of confidential data to an unauthorized party. External data breaches are incidents caused by any external entity or source. These include any hacking/IT incident such as a malware attack, ransomware attack, phishing, spyware, or fraud in the form of stolen cards, etc.
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC), a nonprofit organization based in the USA, reported that there were 9016 data breach instances in different sectors from January 2005 to October 2019. The total number of records exposed in these breaches was more than 10 billion (10,376,741,867) [6]. The different types of attacks used to breach the information were Intentional Insider Attacks (INSD), Frauds Using Cards (CARD), Physical Damage such as the theft or loss of paper documents (PHYS), Damage of Portable Device such as lost or theft (PORT), Hacking or Malicious Attacks (HACK), Stationary Computer Loss (STAT), Unknown Approaches (UNKN), and Unintentional Disclosure (DISC). The organizations that were affected by these data breaches may be classified into the following categories:
Some data breach incidents corresponding to each sector have been reported in the PRC database. Since in these intrusions, no records were breached, the authors have not included those numbers in their reference on the representation of data breaches by sector. After an exhaustive analysis of the PRC database, the compiled information was tabulated in Table 1.
In the second case, from 2015 to 2019, there were a total of 2027 data breach incidents faced among the specified sectors. Out of these 2079 incidents, 1587 were recorded in the healthcare (MED) sector, which is 76.59% of the total. The MED sector is followed by the BSF sector, with a share of 9.36%. However, the other sectors show a small decrease in incidents. The data clearly shows that the healthcare industry has become the main victim of data breaches. Moreover, the rate of healthcare data breaches has increased even more rapidly in the last five years.
Analysis of Table 2 shows that 249.09 million people were the victims of healthcare data breach episodes. From 2005 to 2009, 13.49 million Health Records were exposed, i.e., 5.41% of the total number of cases. In the period from 2010 to 2014, 78.18 million records were exposed; this makes up 31.38% of the total. From 2015 to 2019, 157.40 million records were exposed, that is, 63.19% of the total. In addition, out of 249.09 million records, 161.05 were exposed through hacking attacks that comprised 64.65% of the total exposed health records from 2005 to 2019. An interesting pattern that can be detected here is that:
Thus, this analysis clearly depicts that hacking and other IT-related attacks have become a serious concern for the healthcare data industry. Unauthorized access/ internal disclosure have also shown an increase in the last few years, but not as fast as hacking incidents. Out of the total of 843 unauthorized internal disclosure incidents, 542 were reported in the last four years. This figure comprises 64.29% of the total, and out of this, 16.84% incidents were reported in 2019. A comparison of this proportion (16.84%) with last year (2019) shows that hacking incidents increased by 32.23%. This is double the number of unauthorized internal disclosure incidents. Here, we also found how hacking incidents became more frequent and became a severe concern for the healthcare sector.
In Table 6, eight locations, i.e., Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Laptop, Desktop computers, Other Portable electronic devices, Paper documents, Network Server, Email, and Other, are the locations from where the protected health information (PHI) was breached. According to the analysis, out of the 8 locations, Paper/Film is the most susceptible to breaches. It saw 575 b