More
than 175 million health care records have been breached since 2010,
and they’re getting more vulnerable every year, according to a new
analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association.
By the numbers: The
total number of breaches is increasing — from 99 in 2010 to 344 in
2017. Doctors and hospitals are breached most frequently, but
insurers’ breaches expose the most individual records.
Data
breaches that affect more than 500 people have to be reported to the
federal government. There have been more than 2,100 of them since
2010.
Between the lines: A
handful of high-profile hacks against large insurance companies in
2015 seem to have been especially damaging.
- The
cumulative number of records exposed from doctors and hospitals has
risen steadily every year. The total number that came from insurance
companies, however, skyrocketed in 2015 — then leveled off.
- Similarly,
the total number of records exposed through hacking (as opposed to
other types of breaches) jumped from about 3 million in 2014 to 115
million in 2015. It is still climbing.
- 2015
saw several big
health care hacks, including a historic breach of Anthem’s
records.