80+ Healthcare Data Breach Statistics 2026

Statistics for data breaches in healthcare reveal that 30% of all large data breaches occur in hospitals. 51% of healthcare organizations reported an increase in data breaches since 2019. The first half of 2022 saw 337 breaches which affected 19,992,810 individuals.

With hospitals now experiencing the largest number of data breaches continuously for the past 12 years, it is high time to take an in-depth look into the statistics revolving around it. In this article, we aim to analyze and study the compiled healthcare data breach statistics 2026.

Top Healthcare Data Breach Statistics 2026

Here are the top healthcare data breach statistics 2023-2026:

1. According to HIPAA, healthcare data breaches in the U.S. have decreased by 48%.
2. 36% of healthcare facilities reported an increase in medical complications owing to ransomware attacks.
3. Only 4-7% of the health system’s IT budget is invested in cybersecurity.
4. 61% of healthcare data breach threats come from negligent employees.
5. Fortified Health Security’s mid-year report stated that the healthcare sector suffered nearly 337 breaches in the first half alone.
6. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 337 healthcare incidents reported affected 19,992,810 individuals .
7. 80% of the reported healthcare breaches by U.S. HSS were accounted for by hacking while the remaining 15% was accounted for by unauthorized access.

Healthcare Data Breach Statistics – 2026

This section will take a deep dive into general statistics for a data breach in healthcare, statistics based on the type of incidents as well as statistics of healthcare breaches based on the cost. Lastly, it will also mention detailed statistics of data breaches that rattled the healthcare industry.

Healthcare Data Breach Statistics By Year

• There was a 75.6% chance of a breach of at least 5 million records in the year 2023.
• The third quarter of 2022 saw 1 in 42 healthcare organizations targeted by ransomware attacks.
• OneTouchPoint reported a breach in July 2022 that affected nearly 2,651,396 individuals.
• Nearly 93% of healthcare organizations have experienced a data breach in the past three years according to Herjavec Group’s 2020 Healthcare Cybersecurity Report and 57 percent have had more than five data breaches during the same timeframe.
• 2020 saw nearly 240 million hacking attempts with Cerebro accounting for 58% of threats, Sodinokibi at 16%, and VBCrypt at 14%.
• A report from the American Journal of Managed Care revealed that hospitals spend 64% more annually on advertising after a breach.
• Sutter Health, a Northern California healthcare system was hit by around 87 million cyber threats in 2018.
• More than 2100 healthcare data breaches have been reported since 2009.

Data Breach Statistics Based on Type of Incident

The most common causes of data breaches in the healthcare industry are phishing attacks, ransomware attacks, and business email compromise attacks (BEC).

Phishing

• 88% of healthcare workers opened phishing emails.
• Phishing and other forms of cyber attacks have seen a 75% increase in 2021.
• The HIMSS survey revealed that 36% of non-acute care organization representatives claimed that their organization did not conduct phishing tests.
• A report analyzed by Health IT revealed that nearly 24% of health employees in the U.S. hadn’t received any cybersecurity awareness training to help identify phishing scams.

Ransomware

•  74% of ransomware attacks were aimed at hospitals, and 26% at secondary institutions like dental services and nursing homes.
• It was estimated that ransomware attacks would quadruple from 2017 to 2020 and grow 5x by 2021.
• 2020 saw nearly 560 healthcare facilities fall victim to ransomware attacks.
• 8% of healthcare data breach claims were triggered by ransomware attacks.

Business Email Compromise

• A 2019 survey by HIMSS Cybersecurity revealed that nearly 60% of hospital representatives and healthcare IT professionals said that emails were the most common cause of data compromise.
• Healthcare email frauds have seen exponential growth at 473%.
• Healthcare organizations were targeted at an average of 96 email frauds every quarter.
• 70% of the fraud emails to healthcare institutions were sent during office timings between 7 A.M. and 1 P.M.