Malicious outsiders grabbed the headlines when predatory data breaches rose nearly 300% in 2016. However, health IT leaders are now equally concerned with preventing the breaches originating from unwitting participants — employees who accidentally open the security back door for cyberattackers.
Healthcare employees click on one out of every seven phishing email scams, and nearly a quarter of healthcare employees write down their usernames and passwords near their computers. According to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, healthcare was the only industry in which insider threat created more data breaches than external attacks. Of those internal breaches, 81% resulted from errors.
To defend against negligent breaches, organizations must develop a culture of security that protects employees at all points of access.