Cyber attacks: Indian healthcare is the second most targeted globally
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Jan 2023
While COVID-19 spurred rapid digitalisation, especially in the healthcare industry, the industry also witnessed an almost equal surge in cyber attacks on healthcare organisations worldwide, according to a recent research by AI and digital security company CloudSEK.
The analysis by the company revealed that first four months of 2022 saw cyber attacks on the healthcare industry increase by 95% compared to the same period in 2021. The research also found that the Indian healthcare sector was the second-most targeted globally.
Data available with CloudSEK reveals that around 4% of the cyber threats identified in 2021 targeted healthcare institutions. This can be attributed to the advancements in technology and infrastructure of the healthcare industry along with the mass digitisation of systems brought about by the growing market and catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Healthcare accounts for over 10% of the GDP of most developed countries and the global healthcare industry was valued at $359.2bn in 2021 and is expected to reach $665.37bn by 2028.
A report by cyber security think tank CyberPeace Foundation and security consultancy Autobot Infosec revealed that the healthcare sector faced a total of 1.9m cyber attacks till 28 November 2022.
According to a report by security firm IndusFace of the 1m attacks it detected during 2022 on its healthcare customers, 278,000 were from India. Around 80% of these attacks targeted internal human resource management systems, customer service portals, ticketing systems and developer tools. M