"Healthcare Ransomware Attacks Cost US $78bn"

According to security researchers at Comparitech, ransomware breaches have cost the US economy tens of billions of dollars in downtime alone over the past seven years.  The researchers analyzed data on all known ransomware attacks affecting medical organizations between 2016 and mid-October 2023, looking at specialist IT news, data breach reports, and state reporting tools.  During the time period, there were 539 reported attacks on healthcare organizations, impacting an estimated 9780 separate hospitals, clinics, and other organizations.  Over 52 million patient records were compromised.  The researchers stated that downtime varied from minimal disruption for those with frequent data backups to months of recovery time, although the average was 14 days per organization.  At nearly 19 days, 2023 is the worst year for downtime during the reporting period, followed by 2022 (16 days).  Based on these figures, ransomware attacks since 2016 may have caused as many as 6347 days, or 17.4 years, of downtime.  Using a 2017 estimate that puts the average cost per minute of downtime at $8662, the researchers calculated that US healthcare organizations lost $19.3m in 2020, $9.4m in 2021, $16.2m in 2022 and $15.5m so far in 2023.  The total for the entire reporting period since 2016 is $77.5bn.  So far this year, 66 ransomware attacks have taken place on 1568 medical organizations, leading to over 7.3 million breached patient records.  The researchers noted that with three months still to go until the end of the year, it’s highly likely that 2023 will see a renewed spike in ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations.  

Infosecurity reports: "Healthcare Ransomware Attacks Cost US $78bn"