The Breach is Dead, Long Live the Breach: A Spatial Temporal Study of Healthcare Data Breaches

In recent years, a growing number of healthcare organizations have been affected by data breaches. In healthcare entities, preventing data security incidents mainly requires a comprehensive understanding of the context and the factors contributing to such threats. Utilizing publicly available federal data, we examine, from a spatio-temporal perspective, the factors and the context associated to data breaches targeting healthcare sector in the United States (US) between 2009 and 2021. We shed light on healthcare data breaches that occurred during the Covid19 Pandemic era to gain a better understanding of the impact of the global context on data breach incidents. In our findings, the hacking and IT incidents are the most common types of breaches targeting specifically Healthcare providers entities. Victim healthcare organizations are more frequent in Texas, California and Florida. Over the course of years, Emails and Network servers have become the main targeted breach locations. By understanding and identifying factors related to data breach incidents, healthcare IT security professionals can mitigate the risk of leaks.