Ransomware impacts on healthcare industry 5 times higher than average

Recent cyber incidents highlight healthcare as a top target for ransomware hackers. Research by Rubrik Zero Labs shows these attacks have significant impacts, with an estimated one-fifth of healthcare organisations’ sensitive data affected in each attack.

Rubrik Zero Labs’ new “The State of Data Security: Measuring Your Data’s Risk” report offers insights on real-world risks against data as the pace and volume of cyber events continues to increase globally, aided by the explosion of data in the cloud and the realities of modern computing environments. Rubrik Zero Labs studies the challenges organisations’ face to protect their crown jewels – their data – as well as how to reduce data risk and prepare for the evolving risk cycle before, during, and after a cyberattack.

“Despite the fallout of cyberattacks dominating headlines, data risk is an issue that continues to be murky – especially in terms of what security teams can actually change and what they cannot,” said Steven Stone, Head of Rubrik Zero Labs. “With this report, we aim to provide quantifiable insights that IT and security leaders can bring back to their organisation to drive greater cyber resilience-in particular with their partners in the business and governance teams. The more we talk about cyber threats like ransomware, and its impact on industries like healthcare, the more we can collaborate to minimise the risk calculus and ultimately beat cyber attackers trying to impede our businesses.”

The Rubrik Zero Labs research unit pairs Rubrik telemetry across its customer base of more than 6,100 organisations with findings from a survey conducted by Wakefield Research of more than 1,600 IT and security leaders – half of which are CIOs and CISOs. Additionally, this study incorporated data from two Rubrik partner organisations and five other research organisations in an effort to provide the most objective findings. With core focuses including the cyber threat landscape in the healthcare industry, cloud data security blind spots, and ransomware, key findings include:

Healthcare Far Surpasses the Global Average in Sensitive Data

• Rubrik observed that healthcare organisations secure 22% more data than the global average.
• A typical healthcare organisation saw their data estate grow by 27% last year.
• A typical healthcare organisation has more than 42 million sensitive data records – 50% more sensitive data than the global average of 28 million.
• Sensitive data records in observed healthcare organisations grew by more than 63% in 2023 – far surpassing any other industry and more than five times the global average (13%).

Ransomware Produces Outsized Impacts Against Healthcare

• Ransomware attacks against observed healthcare organisations have an estimated impact of almost five times more sensitive data than the global average.
• This equates to an estimated 20% of a typical healthcare organisation’s total sensitive data holdings impacted every time there is a successful ransomware encryption event, compared to 6% for an average organisation.
• Virtualisation really matters for healthcare and ransomware: 97% of all encrypted data in Rubrik observed healthcare organisations last year occurred within virtualised architecture compared to 83% across all industries.

As Cloud Becomes More Widely Adopted, New Security Blind Spots Emerge

• Organisations are becoming more dependent on the cloud. In 2023, Rubrik observed that cloud architecture stored 13% of an organisation’s data, compared to 9% in 2022. Comparatively, on-premises declined from 77% in 2022 to 70% in 2023.
• Of the external organisations victimised in a cyberattack in 2023, many were attacked across multiple aspects of their hybrid environment with 67% of attacks impacting SaaS data, 66% for the cloud, and 51% for on-premises locations.
• The cloud comes with inherent risk based on security blind spots and vulnerable sensitive data, according to Rubrik Telemetry:

• Blind spot #1: 70% of all data in a typical cloud instance is object storage, which typically has a far lower security coverage compared to other areas.
• Blind spot #2: 88% of all data in object storage is not confirmed as machine readable or covered by prominent security technologies and services.
• Blind spot #3: More than 25% of object storage data is subject to regulatory or legal requirements, such as protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII).

Ransomware Continues to Wreak Havoc across Organisations — and IT and Security Teams

• 94% of IT and security leaders reported their organisation experienced a significant cyberattack last year, and on average faced 30 attacks in that timeframe. One-third of these victims endured at least one ransomware attack.
• 93% of external organisations that endured a ransomware attack reported paying a ransom demand, with 58% of these payments motivated primarily by threats to leak stolen data.
• 96% of senior IT and security leaders reported changes to their emotional and/or psychological state as a direct result of a cyberattack, with 38% worrying over job security.
• Leadership changes increased following cyberattacks, reported by 44% of organisations — up from 36% in Rubrik Zero Labs’ Fall 2022 report “The State of Data Security: The Human Impact of Cybercrime.”

Rubrik Zero Labs, the company’s data security research unit formed to analyse the global threat landscape, reports on emerging data security issues to give organisations research-backed insights and best practices to secure their data against increasing cyber events.

Ritchelle Drilon

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Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.

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