To Click or Not to Click — That Is The Question: How To Avoid Or Rapidly Recover From Data Breaches

Information can be one’s greatest ally, but for many organizations it can also become public enemy #1. The healthcare industry has learned this the hard way in 2016 as it has increasingly fallen victim to a series of ransomware attacks.

In February, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center chose to pay ransomware hackers $ 17,000 after an attack disabled its networks 1 and left it unable to use its electronic health record system for 10 days. In March, a ransomware attack paralyzed MedStar Health’s computer systems. 2 Those are just two examples. More than half of hospitals surveyed recently by HIMSS Analytics and Healthcare IT News said they had been hit by ransomware attacks in the past year. 3 Another 25 percent were unsure whether such attacks had occurred.