What's behind health care data breaches?

The most common source of health care data breaches isn’t outside hackers — it’s internal mistakes and issues. Researchers analyzed the causes of more than 1,100 data breaches in the U.S. from 2009 to 2017 and found that 53 percent were the result of internal issues. That includes employees who stole data, but also staffers who pulled up patient data on personal devices, clicked on phishing emails, and, in some cases, accidentally emailed health information to the wrong person. Another 33 percent of data breaches were due to outside or unknown parties stealing health data or equipment. The authors say health care providers need to tighten up their protocols for keeping patient data safe.