Why resilience matters to both healthcare patients and healthcare IT

Unintended IT downtime is not good for anyone’s business, especially healthcare. Cyberattacks happen. Consider these two high-level numbers: Cyberattacks have almost doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic. The associated costs are up, too. According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach in 2024 was $4.88M.

What’s the most significant risk to healthcare organizations? Forty-three percent of respondents to a 2023 healthcare report said that risks to data security were their top concern. In fact, 76% of respondents said they’d experienced a successful ransomware attack in the last two years.  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) publishes a summary of healthcare data breaches on its website. According to TechTarget’s analysis of the OCR website, over 168,000,000 individuals were affected by healthcare data breaches reported to OCR in 2024.

So, the volume of destructive cyberattacks is up. The cost of a data breach is up. And over 168,000,000 people were affected by healthcare data breaches. Those are some big numbers. What’s the takeaway? Cyberattacks happen. Cyber resilience—the ability for your business to get back up and running—and the speed of recovery matter the most.

Healthcare data security measures

Healthcare data security is key when protecting sensitive patient information, like electronic health records (EHRs), medical billing details, and other protected health information (PHI) from unauthorized use, disclosure, or access. Ensuring patient data availability, confidentiality, and integrity is a critical necessity.

Our backup and recovery solutions align with the recommended best practices by Epic® for protecting the EHR. This includes using immutable backup technology to safeguard against ransomware attacks and ensure data integrity. We also maintain a comprehensive security certification program designed to protect our customers’ data confidentiality, integrity, and availability by industry, U.S. government, and international standards.

Robust security measures are needed to protect patient data. Data encryption ensures that unauthorized users can’t read sensitive information. Access controls restrict data access to only those who are authorized. Potential vulnerabilities can be addressed with regular security audits. Compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other relevant regulations is mandatory. Non-compliance can result in fines and reputational damage. Our products and services adhere to the security benchmarks and requirements aligned with HIPAA guidelines.

Defending healthcare data and cyber threats

Healthcare organizations face challenges and threats to their patient data. Data breaches, which can lead to the unauthorized disclosure of patient data, are always a concern. Staying vigilant against insider threats, phishing, and hacking is also paramount. The growing threat of ransomware can disrupt healthcare services and compromise patient data.  You need to be able to defend against cyber threats. And build a culture of resilience. Remember, the attacks will come. How quickly can you get everything back up and running? That’s the key.

Enhancing patient data security with Cohesity

Bethany Children’s Health Center, a pediatric healthcare facility in Oklahoma, recently started using Cohesity to enhance patient data security and streamline operations. “Restoring our data was a complicated process before Cohesity,” said Kevin Chambers, Chief Information Executive. “With a cyberattack, if we were locked out of our systems, we would not be able to take care of the kids’ needs.”

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Now, with Cohesity, the organization has streamlined processes and enhanced its resilience against cyber threats. “Being able to quickly restore recent data in the event of a system failure or cyberattack is critical to protect the kids’ health and wellbeing—and earn the trust of their families,” Chambers said.

Bethany Children’s now benefits from a centralized dashboard that offers a comprehensive view of their data and backup environment. Immutable backups, AI-driven threat detection, and alerting also provide an added layer of security. “I can’t do what the practitioners and nurses do—but as an IT professional I can try to make their work as easy as possible,” Chambers said. “Cohesity helps us make sure our practitioners can access the data they need to maximize the potential of every child.”

Learn more about Cohesity and healthcare

The Mayo Clinic says resilience is, “...being able to adapt to life’s misfortunes and setbacks.” Resilience is important for healthcare patients. It’s also important for healthcare IT pros who need to be able to access and secure that data from cyberattacks.

“Data is like our blood flow,” Nico Gomez, Chief Executive Officer of Bethany Children’s, told us. Cohesity is proud to protect the data of healthcare organizations. Protecting data, wherever it lives, is what we do at Cohesity. With over 13,000 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 100, we protect hundreds of exabytes of the world’s data. Our customers include eight of the top ten healthcare companies.

Learn more:

• Read the case study, Leading health system inoculates itself against data loss from attack or system failure
• Cohesity CERT (Cyber Event Response Team) Hospital emerges successfully from ransomware attack, recovers payroll system by deadline
• Learn more about Bethany Children’s Health Center