Medical record data - a lucrative hacker hack in 2019

2019 is the year to witness a boom in the number of data leakage related to health - healthcare, leading to nearly 40 million medical records being 'exposed' on the internet by the end. Last October in the United States alone, and many of these have fallen into the hands of crooks or illegal data collection companies.

Throughout October, the Civil Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was informed of 52 data breaches that affected hundreds of thousands of people's personal health records. The country, with 661,830 records, has reached its peak since 2014.

However, in terms of the number of medical records leaked in a security incident, the record number belongs to the case of health insurance company Anthem Premera Blue Cross, causing the health records of 78.8 million people. at risk of falling into the wrong hands.

Considering the general situation in the world, it is not difficult to recognize that organizations operating in the field of health - healthcare are increasingly becoming victims of cybercrime. Research by Kaspersky revealed that the price of data is generally very cheap, depending on the type of vulnerability and the item anonymity requires. However, personal medical records are different, one of the most popular 'commodities' in the black market data market in 2019.

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The reason for this situation is because when the procedure for admission, the hospital often requires a lot of accurate information from the patient, including personal financial data. As a result, records are sometimes considered more valuable than basic credit cards. This data can then be used to make calls for fraud, theft, extortion or any other criminal activity.

More than ever, organizations holding medical records databases need to work more closely with security service providers to create truly effective protective barriers to deal with the current alarming situation.