Why will criminals shopping on the black market pay at least 20 times more for patient records - and the ePHI they contain - than they will for credit card records? In addition to payment information, patient records contain an enormous number of personal details, ranging from medical history, to medications, to family history, all of which can be used for blackmail, identity theft, insurance fraud, and financial account hijacking.

It’s been an intense summer for the healthcare industry. The annual cost to the healthcare industry attributable to breaches of patient information is now more than $6.2B.* Today, Protenus is launching its new monthly Healthcare Breach Barometer with data compiled and provided by DataBreaches.net. The Breach Barometer is a monthly snapshot of reported or disclosed breaches impacting the healthcare industry and includes data from HHS.