AUSTRALIA'S healthcare sector continues to experience more data breaches than any other industry, despite a decline in cases, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) reports.
The latest OAIC Notifiable Data Breach Report, covering the six months to 31 Dec 2021, revealed a decline in the number of incidents impacting the sector - 83 of 464 reported cases, compared to 85 of the 436 notifiable breaches in the Jan to Jun 2021 period.
However, health providers reported more breaches related malicious or criminal attacks than any other sector in the Jul to Dec 2021 reporting period (39), with just under a quarter of those cases relating to a "rogue employee" or "insider threat" and a further 18% linked to "theft of paperwork or [a] data storage device".
A further four malicious attacks on health providers involved ransomware, while phishing scams and compromised or stolen credentials accounted for 16 breaches in the sector.
Health providers also reported the biggest number caused by human error in the same period (39), with personal information being sent to the wrong email recipient accounting for 15 cases, while loss of paperwork or a data storage device was a factor in seven incidents, the OAIC report noted.
The sector was tied with the financial services industry for the highest number of breaches associated with "system fault breakdown", both recording five cases in the six-month-period, with two incidents related to unintended access, and three associated with unintended release or publication of data.
Speaking at the Australian Pharmacy Professional Conference last year, Fred IT Managed Services General Manager, Andrew McManus, warned pharmacy owners that "on average anywhere between three and five pharmacies every six to eight weeks tend to get a ransomware attack" (PD 25 May 2021).
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