Will 2015 Be Worst Year Yet For Data Breaches?

This past year the FBI warned the entire healthcare realm that security practices are not keeping pace with other industries. And a new report is suggesting that healthcare organizations should expect even more data breaches in the New Year.

Indeed, that means bigger and more costly violations. Global information services firm Experian, in its second annual data breach forecast, cites the growing potential entry points to protected health information, wearables and other mobile devices as among the new technologies making healthcare vulnerable — while other studies in 2014 pointed to healthcare organizations’ widespread lack of confidence in securing PHI.  Experian is not the only firm saying data privacy and security will get worse in healthcare.

Consultancy IDC’s Health Insights unit, in fact, included two interesting points in its yearly top 10 predictions for healthcare: First, healthcare entities will have experienced at least one and as many as five cyber attacks in the previous 12 months, with one-third of those considered successful, and, second, by 2020 approximately half of all digital health data will be unprotected...