SecurityScorecard, a security rating and risk monitoring platform, ranked the healthcare industry 15th out of 18 total industries in social engineering, suggesting a large cybersecurity issue in the industry at large.
The finding is from SecurityScorecard's 2016 Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Report, which analyzed 18 industries between August 2015 and August 2016. The report surveyed 700 organizations in the healthcare industry.
"The low social engineering scores among a multitude of healthcare organizations show that security awareness and employee training are likely not sufficient. Security is only as strong as the weakest link, and employees are often the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to phishing, spear phishing and other social engineering attacks," said SecurityScorecard Chief Research Officer Alex Heid.
Here are four other key findings from the study.
1. More than 75 percent of the healthcare industry has been victim to a malware attack.
2. Ninety-six percent of ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations targeted medical treatment centers.
3. Among all 18 industries surveyed, healthcare had the fifth highest number of ransomware attacks.
4. Healthcare manufacturing had almost a 90 percent malware infection rate.
Click here to download the full 2016 Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Report.
More articles on health IT:
Will IT spending change in 2017? 5 insights
Twitter to cut 9% of its workforce
McKesson releases Paragon 14.0 EHR solution; Conemaugh Health System completes $50M Epic overhaul— 6 health IT key notes