Healthcare organizations are vulnerable because patient care relies on interconnected digital systems and sensitive information, while their safeguards, older technology, and third-party dependencies vary. An attack can therefore do more than expose records: it can interrupt time-critical services and make continuity planning a patient-safety issue.
Why healthcare is an attractive and exposed target
Hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, insurers, and their vendors depend on digital tools to access records, schedule appointments, process prescriptions and payments, run imaging and laboratory services, and monitor patients. Those systems hold valuable information and support work that often cannot wait. The World Health Organization (WHO) explains that attackers can exploit this urgency to pressure organizations into paying extortion demands; disruption has led to cancelled appointments and elective surgeries, ambulance diversions, and postponed cancer treatment. WHO’s overview of cyberattacks on critical health infrastructure describes both the interconnectedness of care and the risks created by inadequate safeguards.
Exposure is not caused by a single weakness. It develops where clinical dependence, sensitive data, interconnected suppliers and devices, human behavior, and uneven security controls overlap. That combination makes the sector consequential to attack without meaning that every healthcare organization has the same risk or level of security.
What makes healthcare cybersecurity difficult
Care depends on availability, not just confidentiality
A stolen record is a serious privacy and security incident, but unavailable systems can also delay care. Electronic health records, monitoring devices, scheduling, pharmacy, imaging, and laboratory systems may all be part of a patient’s treatment. When systems are disrupted, staff may have to work around missing information or unavailable services while restoring operations. WHO reports that ransomware incidents have disrupted outpatient appointments, elective surgery, emergency transport, and cancer treatment.
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Many systems and organizations are connected
A care provider’s technology footprint can include medical devices, cloud services, software suppliers, payment processors, diagnostic laboratories, logistics firms, and other partners. Each connection can create dependencies that must be understood and managed. A provider may have strong controls of its own but still rely on an external service whose failure affects billing, information exchange, or care delivery.
HHS’s Hospital Resiliency Landscape Analysis describes supply-chain risk as pervasive. Among the hospitals surveyed for that analysis, 49% said they had adequate coverage for managing supply-chain risk. That finding is specific to the participating hospitals and the analysis; it is not a rating of every U.S. hospital.
Legacy technology can be hard to replace or patch
Healthcare environments may include older operating systems, applications, and medical devices that remain in use because they support essential workflows. Replacing them can be costly and operationally complex, while applying updates may require testing or coordination to avoid disrupting clinical services. Unpatched or unsupported software can leave known weaknesses available to attackers.
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In its 2023 analysis, HHS reported that 96% of participating small, medium, and large hospitals used end-of-life operating systems or software with known vulnerabilities, including on medical devices. The same analysis describes differences among hospitals in adoption of safeguards such as multifactor authentication (MFA) and regular vulnerability scanning. These figures show issues found in that analysis, not that all hospitals have identical technology or security practices.
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Threats identified in HHS’s hospital analysis include ransomware, phishing and spear-phishing, cloud exploitation, software vulnerabilities—including zero-day vulnerabilities—and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Phishing can trick staff into revealing credentials or opening malicious content; attackers may also use social engineering to get around MFA. HHS characterized 71% of attacks in the analyzed data as human-directed. That percentage belongs to the HHS analysis and should not be treated as a universal rate for healthcare incidents.
How cyberattacks can affect patients and providers
- Interrupted clinical work: Staff may lose access to records, imaging, scheduling, laboratory results, or monitoring systems, slowing or changing how services are delivered.
- Delayed or diverted care: Disruption can force appointment cancellations, postponed procedures, or ambulance diversions when a facility cannot safely provide a service.
- Data exposure and extortion: Attackers may steal sensitive patient or business information and threaten to publish it, while also encrypting or disrupting systems.
- Cascading operational problems: A failure at a payment or technology intermediary can affect many providers that depend on its services, even if the providers were not directly attacked.
The February 2024 ransomware attack on Change Healthcare illustrates that last risk. The company processed healthcare payments, and the incident involved data theft and widespread effects on provider operations and patient care. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported an estimated $874 million in losses from the attack in its 2025 report, Healthcare Cybersecurity: HHS Continues to Have Challenges as Lead Agency. That estimate describes this incident, not a typical cost for every healthcare cyberattack.
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A separate measure concerns the number of affected people. HHS’s Office for Civil Rights says Change Healthcare’s July 19, 2024 breach report initially listed 500 individuals—the minimum number that triggers a posting on the HHS Breach Portal—and that the total was still being determined. The initial filing figure is not the eventual confirmed total. See the HHS OCR Change Healthcare FAQ.
What the available figures do—and do not—show
HHS’s Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center reported more than 630 ransomware incidents affecting healthcare worldwide in 2023, including more than 460 affecting the U.S. Healthcare and Public Health sector, in a presentation dated January 18, 2024. Those are dated incident counts, not a current annual estimate. The presentation, Ransomware & Healthcare, should be read in that context.
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These statistics come from different sources, measure different things, and cover different populations or time periods. They demonstrate that attacks and resilience gaps are real, but they do not establish one universal cause or a single risk ranking that applies to every healthcare organization.
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How healthcare organizations can reduce cyber risk
HHS frames its healthcare Cybersecurity Performance Goals as a voluntary set of prioritized practices intended to strengthen preparedness and resilience and protect patient information and safety. The goals are presented as a baseline of safeguards addressing common vulnerabilities; they are not a guarantee against incidents. The HHS Cybersecurity Performance Goals include mitigating known vulnerabilities and reducing email spoofing, phishing, and fraud.
HHS’s 2023 edition of Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP) organizes mitigation into ten practice areas:
- Email protection
- Endpoint protection
- Identity and access management
- Data protection and loss prevention
- IT asset management
- Network management
- Vulnerability management
- Security operations and incident response
- Security for network-connected medical devices
- Cybersecurity oversight and governance
These practices work together: organizations need to know what assets they have, control access, reduce exploitable weaknesses, protect users and endpoints, and be prepared to detect and respond to incidents. HICP includes a scenario in which a phishing compromise of a file server connected to ICU heart monitors could disrupt devices, illustrating why medical-device security and network dependencies matter alongside email security.
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Preparedness also requires people and operational planning. WHO recommends investment in people, processes, and technology, including awareness training and incident-response plans rehearsed by staff. A response plan should account for how essential services can continue safely during downtime and how operations will recover; continuity is part of patient safety, not an afterthought.
For small and medium entities conducting internal assessments relevant to HIPAA Security Rule risk-analysis requirements, HHS OCR points to its Security Risk Assessment Tool.
How to think about risk at a particular organization
There is no universal score in the cited guidance that ranks every provider. A practical assessment should examine how the following factors apply to the specific organization:
- Clinical dependence: Which time-sensitive services require digital systems to be available?
- Data exposure: What sensitive information is held, and which systems or users can access it?
- Technology and supplier footprint: Which legacy systems, connected devices, cloud services, and external partners are critical?
- Control maturity: Can the organization identify assets, manage vulnerabilities, protect email and endpoints, control access, and detect incidents?
- Continuity capacity: Can essential care continue safely during downtime, and have staff practiced the response and recovery plans?
These considerations help explain why two organizations may face different levels of exposure even when they provide similar services. The relevant question is not simply whether a provider has security tools, but whether its controls and continuity plans match the systems and care its operations depend on.
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