Study finds that Healthcare Cyber Security is Worse than Retailers’

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Big name retailers like eBay and Target have been under fire for cyber security breaches. More than 145 million eBay users’ accounts were left vulnerable when the company discovered that hackers had access to login email addresses, personal addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth.Target’s security breach included 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers and other personal information being collected by hackers. However, even given these two examples, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies have been found to have worse cybersecurity than retailers.

 

According to a study by BitSight Technologies, healthcare companies had the lowest score in security practices and slowest response times to fix security issues. BitSight found that on average, it took healthcare companies 5.3 days to resolve an issue.
The report also found that healthcare companies had the highest percentages of the Conficker worm, which is malicious software. Although malicious, the Conficker worm is easy to get rid of and with the right security practices in place shouldn’t cause companies any trouble.
Finance companies were found to have the best security practices. The chief technology officer for BitSight, Stephen Boyer, said this is probably because at “the high-performing organizations, it is an executive-level issue. What we’ve seen in financial services is they have a culture of risk management. They’ve been managing fraud for quite some time. It’s money to them.”

 

Healthcare companies are vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and once the hackers are in the system they can gain access to a variety of sensitive information.

Don’t let your practice be vulnerable to cybersecurity threats! Call Stratosphere Networks today at 877-599-3999 and receive your free IT consultation.

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