Carl Leonard, principal security analyst for Websense, says hackers are breaking into the computer networks of health-care facilities with increasing frequency and taking valuable personal information that is often secured improperly. In August, Websense researchers reported that over the previous 10 months they had observed a 600 percent increase in attacks on hospitals (See “Hackers Are Homing In on Hospitals”). Leonard’s group now predicts that in 2015 the health-care industry will see a “substantial increase” in thefts of data.

The cause of the uptick isn’t hard to diagnose. Medical organizations across the world are switching to electronic medical records, and computer security is not always a high enough priority during the process, says Leonard. Besides that, he says, easy and fast access to medical information often trumps security.

Various studies suggest that cyber-thieves have identified health data as a soft target. The Ponemon Institute, a U.S. privacy think tank, found that 40 percent of health-care organizations surveyed in 2014 reported being attacked by malware designed to steal data, up from 20 percent in 2010. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, which tracks large computer security breaches, reports that nearly four million more records were stolen this year than in any previous year.

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