80% of Leaders of Health IT Claim their Computers Have Been Compromised - KPMG

Modernhealthcare.com reported on 26th August, 2015 quoting consulting group KPMG as "Approximately 8 out of 10 health information technology leaders surveyed recently and found their provider or insurance organisations experienced a cyberattack which hijacked their computers in the last two years."

Only 16% of the total 223 executives who were surveyed said that their organizations had not been hijacked in the last 24 months and another 3% of them were not sure.

Modernhealthcare.com published news on 26th August, 2015 quoting Michael Ebert, Head of KPMG's Health and Life Sciences Cyber Practice, as saying: "81% of breached systems could be even more if the remaining 19% are like most health IT leaders."

One out of four respondents noted that as per their knowledge about their organisation's defenses, they don't know or don't have those abilities to detect, in actual time, whether their organizations are being hijacked.

65% of respondents chose malware and 26% selected botnets which were the most usually mentioned external attack vectors while internal sources of attack were mentioned by 26% (respondents could select more than one). All three kind of attacks happened relatively with the identical frequency for providers and payers.

Prnewswire.com published news on 26th August, 2015 quoting Ebert as saying "The vulnerability of patient data at the health plans of the nation and around 5,000 hospitals is on the rise and executives of health care are struggling to protect records of patients. Records of patients are much more valuable than credit card information for people who plan to commit fraud because personal information cannot be changed easily. An important goal for executives is to advance their institution's protection to create difficulties for hackers."

Prnewswire.com published news on 26th August, 2015 quoting Greg Bell, Leader of KPMG's Cyber Practice, as saying "We feel that healthcare organisations which can successfully track the number of attempts, are less worried than those who are unable to detect all threats against their systems."

Dotmed.com published news on 26th August, 2015 stating an alarming comparison as "The experienced hackers which penetrate a vulnerable health care organization wish to remain undetected as long as they can before extracting a great deal of content just like an insect sucks blood."

» SPAMfighter News - 9/3/2015