Healthcare’s slack security costs $1.6B

A new health IT report by MeriTalk reveals that 61% of healthcare organizations in the US have experienced a security related incident in the form of security breach, data loss or unplanned downtime. These incidents cost US hospitals an estimated $1.6 billion each year, with an average of $810,000 per security breach. The majority of these breaches result from malware and viruses (58%), outsider attacks (42%) and physical security (38%).