Majority of Health Data Breaches Due to Theft
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Type of Health Data Breaches as of Feb. 17, 2011 |
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| # of Breaches | Breach Type | # of Individuals Affected |
| 135 | Theft | 3,699,822 |
| 54 | Unauthorized Access | 787,398 |
| 42 | Loss | 1,216,468 |
| 21 | Hacking/IT Incident | 903,889 |
| 14 | Improper Disposal | 81,859 |
| 1 | Other | 344,579 |
| (Editor’s Note: Often breaches are attributed to multiple reasons, so the numbers attributed to any one cause will overstate the total in any one category) | ||
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Source: HHS |
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Source: HIPAA & Breach Enforcement Statistics for March 2011
Statistics on health data breaches from January 18 through Feburary 17, 2011 demonstrate that theft is the number one type of health data breach reported.
Although these statistics include both printed and electronic data, the salient point is the "hacking" only accounts for a relatively small percentage of security breaches. The majority result from theft, while hacking (during the period noted below), only accounted for 7.8% of all breaches
This underscores the importance of never storing protected information on a desktop or (more particularly) laptop computer, and, if there is a valid business need for protected data to be stored on a desktop or laptop computer, that adequate precautions be taken to physically secure the device. More about protected personal information & security best practices