The top motivation of healthcare cyberattacks was financial, comprising 95 percent of hacking incidents, according to a May 24 Verizon data breach report.
The other reasons were espionage (4 percent) and convenience and grudge (1 percent each). The compromised information included personal (58 percent), medical (46 percent) and credentials (29 percent).
Of the 849 healthcare incidents Verizon analyzed — 571 with confirmed data disclosure — 61 percent involved external actors, though healthcare had a greater problem with internal actors than any other industry. In healthcare, basic web application attacks were greater than in other sectors and higher than the last three and five years, respectively.
Overall, ransomware breaches rose by 13 percent from November 2020 to October 2021, a greater increase than the previous five years combined, the report found. The professional, scientific and technical services industry had the most incidents.