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Healthcare Businesses Report All-Time Record Data Breaches in 2016

By Marcos Colon

The record for the number of data breaches reported by healthcare businesses has been smashed in 2016, but the news coming out of a recent report is not all negative.

An annual study by security firm Bitglass which aggregates data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that a total of 328 healthcare organizations reported data breaches in 2016, a 22 percent increase from the 268 reported breaches in 2015.

While the number of incidents have jumped considerably, there was a drop in leaked records, which puts fewer patients at risk. Although 16.6 million records were exposed in 2016, it’s a significant drop from the 35 million leaked records in 2015.

Healthcare businesses are required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to disclose incidents that cause data exposure. 

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