The global healthcare cybersecurity market was valued at $5.5 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow lucratively over the next several years, according to a report by Grand View Research.
Key factors attributing to its rapid growth include increasing threat of cyber attacks, regulatory and security compliance related issues, and data leaks from within the organization triggered by external or internal factors. Furthermore, increasing instances of patent infringement, theft of intellectual property, business secrets, medical identity fraud, and loss of electronic patient health records (ePHI), social security records are also expected to boost the usage of products in the field of healthcare over the forecast period, the report found.
In 2014, identity and access management held the maximum market share of nearly 14 percent. However, risk and compliance management is expected to be the most lucrative solution type growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 9 percent over the forecast period, the report said.
The report referenced data published by the SANS institute, and also its own internal estimates, which found that during September 2012 and October 2013, more than 380 healthcare organizations witnessed devices and networks related security threats in the U.S. What’s more, it mentioned a Ponemon Institute report which found that the average cost of data breach in a hospital was more than $2 million, with costs increasing with the size of the healthcare organization.
As such, the lack of adequate IT spending by healthcare organizations and lack of awareness about cyber crime are key reasons attributing to the increasing attacks on healthcare organizations, researchers found. The overall impact of these attacks on hospitals and healthcare systems is estimated to be nearly $6 billion annually in terms of revenue, with patient medical and insurance records being the key factors triggering such attacks.
The trend of cyber attacks on medical device manufacturers, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies is on the rise across the globe, but the highest impact has been witnessed by the U.S. based companies. North America held the largest share of the market, at 40 percent. The type of threat, frequency of attack and impact of each attack varies across different organizations based on their internal security controls. Earlier on, these attacks were focused more on stealing credit card details, billing information, bank account numbers using spam mails, phishing, or by using stolen devices with un-encrypted data. Also, the time taken to identify security breaches can be very long, if adequate internal systems, firewalls are not used and it can create huge impact to the company’s credibility and accountability, the report found.
Further, lack of internal identification and systems, use of insecure networks, employee negligence, and loss of devices with un-encrypted files or data theft by employee are also some of the key aspects contributing to the increasing crimes. In 2014, malware held the largest market share and is expected to continue its strong growth over the forecast period, according to the report.
Ideally, organizations implement more than two-layer or three-layer security frameworks to better identify the threats and control the flow of data, information and monitor the various other transactions performed by each user, the researchers advised.
