on Change Healthcare, a major health technology company, has sent shockwaves through the healthcare system. With payment disruptions continuing to cost providers an estimated $100 million per day, according to an estimate fromAs the CTO of NordLayer, a cybersecurity company, I have witnessed a trend of malicious actors increasingly setting their sights on healthcare organizations.
Perhaps most crucially, the life-or-death nature of healthcare makes these organizations prime targets for ransomware and other disruptive attacks. Cybercriminals recognize that hospitals cannot tolerate prolonged IT outages that put patient lives at risk. This willingness to quickly restore operations at any cost has fueled a profitable criminal enterprise.The latest data simply illustrate the escalating cyber threat to healthcare.
The consequences have been severe, with cyber incidents forcing hospitals and health systems to divert patients, postpone critical procedures and endure extended care disruptions—directly jeopardizing patient safety., a record 133 million individuals were compromised. This represents a 156% increase from 2022 and surpassed the previous high of 113 million breached records set in 2015. On average, 373,788 healthcare records were breached every single day.