Data breaches are expected to cost healthcare more than $6 billion a year. The pressure to increase security and prevent damaging data hacks in on. Here are five things to know about companies' reactions to the increase in data breaches and rise in high profile media coverage of these breaches, according to an Experian Data Breach Resolution and Ponemon Institute report.
1. The majority of survey respondents, 69 percent, indicated that media coverage of data breaches has driven them to reevaluate and prioritize security.
2. Nearly half of the respondents, 45 percent, have increased their security budgets. Additionally, 54 percent have invested in new security technologies and 41 percent hired more security staff.
3. As the price of data breaches skyrockets, as does the risk, more C-suite executives are honing in on security issues; 67 percent of the survey respondents said their executives were becoming more supportive of security initiatives focused on protecting payment information.
4. While most respondents agreed security holds a high level of importance, few thought the industry collaboration necessary to reach a high level of security is in place. Thirty percent of respondents thought industry collaboration was minimal, while 20 percent of respondents considered industry collaboration nonexistent.
5. While industry as a whole is concerned with data security, it remains to be seen what steps healthcare will take as a united industry to prevent breaches.
Click here to read the full Data Security in the Evolving Payments Ecosystem report.