More than half the reported health IT data breaches in 2012 — 53 percent — were due to theft, according to HHS' latest Annual Report to Congress on Breaches of Unsecured Protected Health Information.
Theft has consistently remained the most common cause of data breaches since 2009. Between 2009 and 2010, data breach incidents due to theft dropped from 60 percent to 48 percent, but has steadily risen since then to the 53 percent reported in 2012.
Following theft, unauthorized access or disclosure was the second most common causes of data breaches in 2012, at 18 percent. Loss accounted for 12 percent of reported data breaches.
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