Who Owns My Data? An Analysis of Healthcare Data Breach Trends Since COVID-19

A data breach at Managed Care of North America (MCNA) Dental in February 2023, led by ransomware group LockBit, exposed information on 8.9 million patients. The healthcare industry’s increasing digitisation due to the Covid-19 pandemic has left it vulnerable to cyberattacks, with 41 million individuals affected by breaches in the first half of the year. Network servers, the storage centres for patient data, were the most commonly breached element. Implementing network segmentation and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), in addition to maintaining transparency with patients, was suggested as potential measures against future breaches.