Stay updated with the latest healthcare cybersecurity trends, news, and tips to protect patient data and comply with medical industry security standards.
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Background for this topic.
Healthcare is the delivery of clinical care and related services through hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, insurers, and connected medical devices. It depends on electronic health records (EHRs), patient identity systems, diagnostic and imaging platforms, medication and scheduling systems, and data exchanges between organizations. These environments hold sensitive health and payment information, while the availability and integrity of systems can affect treatment, diagnostics, and patient safety.
Security concerns include unauthorized access or disclosure of records, alteration of clinical data, and disruption of care through attacks on EHRs, connected devices, or third-party services. Defenses require risk-based access controls, strong authentication, network separation where appropriate, secure device and software maintenance, backups that support clinical continuity, and tested downtime and incident-response procedures. Vulnerability management must account for legacy systems and devices that cannot be patched quickly. Privacy and compliance obligations, such as HIPAA in the United States, shape how organizations collect, use, share, retain, and report health information.
Implantable brain devices introduce a new and significantly more complex class of cybersecurity risk and critical privacy concerns, compared with traditional medical devices, given the sensitivity of neural data, says Professor Kevin Fu of the Archimedes Center at Northeastern University.
Use cases of AI in healthcare will continue to expand in 2026 - including for back-office automation, ambient exam room documentation, claims processing and clinical decision support - but so will critical privacy, security, legal and other risks, said attorney Wendell Bartnick of law firm Reed Smith.
Suppliers May Be Asked for Evidence of Certain Security Controls, Best PracticesThe National Health Service in England will reach out directly to suppliers to ensure they implement proactive and robust cybersecurity risk management, officials said Wednesday. The move comes after recent high-profile ransomware attacks on NHS vendors that seriously disrupted patient care.
OIG: Gaps in Standards, Third-Party Oversight Put Agencies, Health Sector at RiskAuditors say the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should buttress its ability to respond to cyberthreats by standardizing governance and controls across its many divisions - and also do a better job of overseeing its many contractors and the risk they introduce.
Breach Affected More Than a Dozen Healthcare Clients, 2.5M PatientsElectronic health records vendor Veradigm agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle consolidated class action litigation involving a December 2024 hacking incident discovered in mid-2025 that affected more than a dozen healthcare provider clients and about 2.5 million of their patients.
State Monitoring Incident Involving a Health Entity Worker for Potential FraudThe Minnesota Department of Human Services is notifying nearly 304,000 people of data breach involving someone at a healthcare provider who inappropriately accessed information from an IT system managed by a vendor. State officials are monitoring the incident for potential fraud.
Feds Pushing HIPAA Regulated Entities to Bolster Security Risk ManagementFederal regulators are advising regulated healthcare firms and their third-party vendors to harden systems, software and medical devices to better safeguard protected health information. Hardening is a necessary measure for protecting data privacy security - but also in protecting patient safety.