New York-based CyberMDX has released the company’s 2020 Vision Report, which distills cybersecurity insights from more than 1 million data points. Company officials say the report provides hospitals and medical centers with recommendations that can bolster their cybersecurity posture.

Following a year in which the number of healthcare cyberattacks nearly tripled, the CyberMDX team undertook a project to analyze the most significant healthcare breaches from 2019. The team also made use of information collected from CyberMDX solutions in the field to paint a clearer picture of the threat landscape facing the healthcare industry today. 

Some of the key takeaways from the report include:

  • In the United States, hackers find the most success targeting mid-sized or less well-known healthcare organizations outside of the nation’s largest population centers
  • Four months after a vulnerability disclosure, the typical hospital will have patched 40% or fewer of their vulnerable devices
  • Medical devices are twice as likely as standard network devices to be vulnerable to BlueKeep breaches.
  • Medical devices are up to five-times more likely to be vulnerable to URGENT/11 breaches compared to standard network devices.

“To understand the future of healthcare security we must first look at what has allowed attackers to be so successful,” says Jon Rabinowitz, CyberMDX’s vice president of marketing. “The vast amount of data we analyzed has given us greater insight into the challenges healthcare faces as an industry, and how we can help improve cybersecurity and mitigate future breaches.”