Healthcare workers have access to 31K sensitive files + 6 other report findings

Healthcare organizations have a responsibility to protect health information from getting in the wrong hands. However, that data may be too easily accessible, according to a March 29 Varonis report.

The data security firm analyzed data risk assessments from 3 billion files at 58 companies to determine how data is exposed.

Six key study findings:

  1. The average healthcare organization had 31,000 sensitive files, including HIPAA-protected data and financial information, open to everyone.

  2. Twelve percent of sensitive files are available to every employee, and 19 percent of all healthcare files are open to every employee.

  3. Healthcare organizations average nearly 30,000 exposed folders containing healthcare files per terabyte.

  4. Of the analyzed companies, 77 percent had at least 500 accounts with passwords that never expire.

  5. It takes six to eight hours per healthcare data folder to manually remove open access. This means it would take years to mitigate security risks created by open access.

  6. The average life cycle of a healthcare data breach is 329 days, the highest of any industry.

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