Huntress Survey: Phishing Was the Most Common Cyber Incident Reported by Healthcare IT Pros
Summary
A Huntress survey of 517 U.S. healthcare IT professionals found phishing was the most commonly reported incident in the past year, while data breaches topped concerns and patient-care disruption was the leading perceived impact.
Key points
- Forty percent of respondents reported a phishing incident in the previous 12 months; 20% reported data breaches, 19% malware infections, and 12% each denial-of-service and ransomware incidents.
- Data breaches were the top cybersecurity concern for 33% of respondents, followed by phishing (19%) and ransomware (15%).
- Fifty-two percent said disruption to patient care was the most significant impact of cyber threats; financial loss (34%) and reputational damage (32%) were also reported.
- Thirty-seven percent said their organization experienced no cybersecurity incidents in the past year; the article notes this could reflect gaps in detection or reporting.
- Enhancing employee security-awareness training was the top 2025 priority for 37% of respondents. The article also recommends MFA, patching, network segmentation, backups, and incident-response planning.
- Keeping up with evolving threats (45%) and data privacy concerns (44%) were the most frequently cited challenges. The survey covered 517 U.S. healthcare IT professionals from January 27 to February 5, 2025.
Article Details
- Publisher
- Huntress
- Report Period
- Survey conducted 2025-01-27 to 2025-02-05; published 2025-03-04
- Scope
- Survey of US healthcare IT professionals on cybersecurity incidents, concerns, preparedness, and priorities
- Sample Size
- 517 US healthcare IT professionals aged 25+; unweighted; reported margin of error approximately +/-3% at 95% confidence
- Key Statistics
- 33% of respondents identified data breaches as their top healthcare cybersecurity concern for the year ahead.
- 40% said their organization experienced phishing attacks in the previous 12 months, the most commonly reported incident.
- 52% said disruption of patient care was the most significant impact of cyber threats on their organization.
- 37% identified enhancing employee security awareness training as their top cybersecurity priority for 2025.
- 45% identified keeping up with evolving threats as a leading challenge to implementing and maintaining cybersecurity measures.
- Recommendations
- Enable MFA on all external platforms.
- Maintain a vulnerability management program and keep systems, applications, and medical devices patched.
- Segment networks, especially for legacy equipment and IoT devices, to limit malware spread and isolate infected devices.
- Apply least privilege across user and application accounts.
- Provide regular security awareness training; advise employees to verify unusual urgent messages through direct means and verify recipients when sending or receiving PHI by fax.