Healthcare Data Breach Statistics: HIPAA Violation Cases and Preventive Measures in 2024

Anwita

Anwita

Jan 21, 2025

In October 2021, a Japanese hospital had to shut down operations for almost two months because hackers disabled their malware detection system, accessed sensitive medical data of 85,000 patients, and held them to ransom.

While this made headlines, it is not an isolated incident. Healthcare services have consistently topped the charts for breaches, recovery costs, and impact levels.  

What makes this sector a soft target? What does the data point to? And how can you minimize the risk of becoming a part of the statistic? Read on to know.

Havoc in healthcare: Pandora’s box of virus

According to IBM’s cost of a data breach report, the healthcare industry has been a top recipient of data breaches consecutively for the past 11 years. Due to the high value of sensitive medical records, it continues to remain the main target for malicious actors. The average cost to remediate and recover also remains the highest for the healthcare industry. 

Healthcare centers are no longer dealing with the virus infection in humans – it is now in their digital systems. Smart devices, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and Electronic Health Record (EHRs) systems—all pave the way for malicious hackers to get their hands on the prize: sensitive medical data. 

Breaking down the breaches in healthcare 

Like any other industry, the healthcare sector saw a rapid rise in the shift to the cloud from traditional paper-based systems and the adoption of new technologies. While the shift has tremendously improved the running of healthcare businesses, it has also added an unprecedented number of challenges. 

Attackers in the health sector target case-sensitive medical records of patients, called ePHI (protected health information in electronic format). ePHI is everywhere in modern-day healthcare systems: mobile devices, medical equipment, computers, web-based systems, and more. 

As healthcare becomes more distributed and digitized, the number of vulnerabilities and attack surfaces expands. This has taken a serious toll on the quality of care and the cost of running a care facility. 

Data breach impact in healthcare: The true cost compromise

Healthcare data breaches are seismic events with the potential to halt emergency treatment. At best, hospitals may grapple with temporary outages. At worst, it can result in patient death. 

Other consequences of data breaches include severe financial setbacks, disruptions in business operations, reputational damage, and loss of confidence in services. Depending on the severity and impact of the damage, recovery may take weeks or even months. 

Key statistics on healthcare data breaches

A common misconception business owners have is that their systems won’t be affected. The numbers, however, tell a different story. Given the high frequency of targets in this sector, breaches are just around the corners. 

Here are some key data breach statistics you should know of:

  • 92% of healthcare organizations faced at least one attack in the last 12 months. This is a staggering spike by 88% since 2023. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report).
  • 68% organizations faced a supply chain attack in 2024. Out of these, 82% faced a disruption in patient care. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • With over a 75% increase since 2021, about 88% of healthcare workers admitted to opening at least one phishing email. (Getastra)
  • Ransomware attacks have increased by a whopping 300% since 2015. (Microsoft Threat Intelligence).
  • Cloud based tools are frequently attacked. 61% text messaging and 59% and email collaboration tools were attacked. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • During a ransomware attack, attackers attempted to compromise the backup data in 95% of cases. (Sophos Security
  • Lack of employee training and human error was the major cause of data loss and exfiltration. 31% of data loss was caused by an employee not following policies. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • On average, health care organizations face 1426 breach attempts on a weekly basis. (Social Science Research Network)
  • On average, it takes about 30 days for an American hospital to restore core systems and operations after a ransomware attack. (Social Science Research Network)
  • The average cost of recovering from a compromise is 2x more for organizations who didn’t backup their data compared to those who did (Sophos security).
  • Data encryption has been a powerful tool against ransomware attacks. 98% of health businesses who encrypted their data recovered it after an attack. (Sophos security)
  • In 2024, 389 U.S. healthcare services were hit by ransomware, causing disruptions due to network shutdowns, delayed treatment, and rescheduled appointments. (Tech Policy Press)
  • The main culprits behind healthcare service breaches exploited vulnerability, compromised credentials, malicious email, phishing, and brute force attacks. (Sophos report)

Major healthcare data breaches

While incidents occur everyday in the health sector, some make headlines due to the severity and impact. Here are a few cases that made their way to the front pages, and for all the wrong reasons. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) maintains a repository of reported breaches that are currently being investigated. The healthcare data breach statistics in the past 24 months alone is close to 900 in the United States. The data points to two main types of compromises: hacking incidents and unauthorised disclosure. 

RankYearName of Covered EntityStateIndividuals AffectedType of Breach
12024Change Healthcare, Inc.MN100,000,000Hacking/IT Incident
22015Anthem Inc.IN78,800,000Hacking/IT Incident
32023Welltok, Inc.CO14,782,887Hacking/IT Incident
42024Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.CA13,400,000Unauthorized Access/ Disclosure
52019Optum360, LLCMN11,500,000Hacking/IT Incident
62023HCA HealthcareTN11,270,000Hacking/IT Incident
72015Premera Blue CrossWA11,000,000Hacking/IT Incident
82019Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings dba LabCorpNC10,251,784Hacking/IT Incident
92015Excellus Health Plan, Inc.NY9,358,891Hacking/IT Incident
102023Perry Johnson & Associates, Inc. dba PJ&ANV9,302,588Hacking/IT Incident

Impact of healthcare data breaches

As previously outlined, the impact of breaches is threefold: financial, reputational, and operational. Let’s break down the cost of data breach impact in healthcare.

  • The average loss healthcare services face due to ransomware attacks is estimated at $900,00 a day. (Comparitech)
  • 59% of healthcare organizations faced a ransomware attack. Most of these attacks disrupted patient care. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • Incidents involving loss of sensitive patient information impacted the quality of patient care by causing delays in treatment and increasing the mortality rate. (Penemon)
  • A study by Social Science Research Network found that ransomwares increased patient volumes by 15.2%, waiting room time by 47.6%, and cardiac arrests by 113.6%.
  • The average cost of ransomware payment increased by 10% in 2024 and reached an average of $4.88 million. (Ponemon)

Healthcare cybersecurity trends over time

Given the volatile nature of how healthcare data breaches have evolved over the years:

  • Growing concerns over cyber attacks are a key driving force behind steps orgs are taking to reduce insider threats. In 2024, 71% organizations introduced training programs compared to 65% in 2023. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • Adoption of AI continues to a growing trend with 54% organizations implementing it cybersecurity and patient care. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • The average cost of ransomware payment is rising each year. In 2022, 2023, and 2024 the cost was $771,905, $995,450, and $1,099,200 (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • A quick analysis of the data shared by the HHS breach portal shows that despite some fluctuations, the average number of breaches are increasing in general. The number of breaches was 50,798, 87,820, and 184,139 respectively in 2016, 2019, and 2023.
  • In 2024, the impact of data loss or exfiltration had a higher devastating effect on patient care compared to 2023. Mortality rate and treatment delays increased by 4% and 3% consecutively. (Ponemon Healthcare Security Report)
  • The median breach size of breaches has been going up since 2009 with a slight decline in 2023. It reached the peak in 2015 with close to 79 million records breached. (HIPAA Journal). 
  • As more medical centres are embracing digitization, critical devices like CT scanners, patient monitoring systems, and infusion pumps are connected to servers. This necessitates the need to increase the level of vulnerability surveillance and increases the attack surface. (UC San Diego)

Preventive measures for healthcare organizations

Tips for healthcare organizations to avoid becoming a number in the healthcare data breach statistics:

  • Ensure regular backups: Ransomware attacks continue to contribute to the statistics of cybersecurity in healthcare. Attackers take control of critical, sensitive data and deny the data owners access. Since health care providers need access to medical data for treatment, one way to circumvent this is by creating backups so that such incidents impact business operations. 
  • Conduct employee  training: HIPAA violation statistics show that negligent and careless employees are one of the main culprits of data loss. This issue does not have a 100% effective resolution as human error cannot be fully eliminated, but can be significantly reduced with proper training programs on handling sensitive medical data.
  • Conduct third risk assessments: Healthcare services depend on third party vendors for critical treatment functions. However, 3rd party breaches are higher in the health sector more than other industries. This necessitates the need to develop strong policies, review the controls your vendors implement, and clearly communicate expectations and requirements.  
  • Encrypt PHI: While backups help to ensure business continuity during a ransomware attack, it does not prevent the data from being misused. Unauthorised access to medical data is a privacy violation and the solution is to encrypt it. This way, you make the data unreadable, and prevent a privacy violation. 
  • Adopt automation: If you provide a healthcare service in the U.S. HIPAA is mandatory. For other countries, some regulatory frameworks apply to healthcare businesses. Following these helps to ensure you have the right control and measures in place to minimize the chance of a successful incident. To adhere to the legal and regulatory requirements, use an automation platform like