According to study conducted by Bloomgberg Law and the American Health Lawyers Association, 87 percent of respondents said they believe healthcare providers are much more susceptible to data breaches and cyberattacks than any other industry.
While 97 percent of those surveyed believe cyberthreats will increase in the foreseeable future, healthcare companies and hospitals aren't standing idly by.
Bloomberg Law surveyed an undisclosed number of lawyers directly employed by healthcare corporations as well as those who work at law firms employed by clients involved in the healthcare field.
Here are five things to know from Bloomberg Law's Health Care Cybersecurity Survey 2016.
1. Seventy-three percent of healthcare companies are training employees on data security protocol and in identifying threats. Eighty-four percent are developing and updating internal policies, such as requiring personnel to report data breaches to federal agencies.
2. Lawyers were asked to rank the most common ways hospitals uncover data breaches. Respondents said common discovery methods were employee detection (70 percent), discovery through internal or external audits (50 percent),accidental discovery (37 percent), patient complains (32 percent) and loss prevention efforts (19 percent.)
3. Roughly 70 percent of lawyers surveyed said at least 50 percent of their clients had an incident response plan in place to respond to a breach or cyberattack. However, 40 percent of lawyers said their clients' plans were too generic and had not been adequately tested prior to an actual incident.
4. Twenty-five percent of lawyers surveyed said their organizations were very prepared for a cyberthreat or incident. Five percent said their clients were not prepared at all.
5. Almost 90 percent of corporate lawyers who took part in the survey said their clients have cyber insurance to mitigate the fallout of cyberthreats, while 70 percent of law firm lawyers said about half of their clients possess cyber insurance.