Healthcare Cybersecurity: Why Hospitals Are Under Siege

Healthcare organizations face a threat environment unlike any other sector. Attackers know that hospitals can't simply go offline—when systems fail, patient care suffers. That operational pressure translates to ransom payments. The share of healthcare organizations hit by ransomware nearly doubled between 2021 and 2024, reaching 67%. In 2025, attacks surged another 30%.

The numbers tell a grim story: 93% of U.S. healthcare organizations experienced at least one cyberattack in the past year, averaging 43 incidents per organization. More concerning, 72% reported that at least one incident disrupted patient care. When security failures affect treatment delivery, cybersecurity becomes a patient safety issue.

Why Healthcare Remains a Prime Target

Several factors make healthcare organizations attractive to ransomware operators:

Operational pressure creates payment incentive. A manufacturing plant can shut down for days while recovering from ransomware. A hospital cannot. Delayed surgeries, inaccessible medical records, and diverted ambulances create immediate pressure to pay ransoms and restore operations.

Legacy systems persist. Healthcare IT environments often include systems that are decades old, running on unsupported operating systems with known vulnerabilities. Replacing them requires careful planning around patient care continuity—planning that often gets deferred.

Complex vendor relationships expand attack surface. Modern healthcare involves dozens of vendors: EHR systems, medical device manufacturers, billing services, lab integrations. Each connection represents potential exposure. Attackers have increasingly shifted focus to vendors and service partners, recognizing that compromising one supplier can affect hundreds of healthcare organizations.

Medical devices create blind spots. 89% of healthcare organizations have Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices with known exploitable vulnerabilities. These devices often can't be patched without manufacturer involvement, and taking them offline for updates may not be clinically acceptable.

Recent Attack Patterns

Qilin's Healthcare Focus

The Qilin ransomware group has made healthcare a priority target. Their 17 attacks in the first week of January 2026 alone demonstrated the scale of this focus. The Covenant Health breach in May 2025 exposed 478,000 patient records across facilities in six states.

Qilin's approach mirrors the broader trend: steal data first, then encrypt. Even if organizations restore from backups, they still face extortion over stolen patient records. Medical data commands premium prices on dark web markets because it contains everything needed for identity theft and insurance fraud.

Geographic Spread

Healthcare attacks aren't limited to the United States. The ManageMyHealth breach in New Zealand affected 126,000 patients through the Kazu ransomware variant. The attack demonstrated that smaller healthcare systems in any country face the same threats as major U.S. hospital networks.

Medical Device Vulnerabilities

Connected medical devices introduce risks beyond traditional IT systems. The WHILL wheelchair Bluetooth vulnerability we covered in January—with its CVSS 9.8 score allowing unauthenticated remote control—highlighted how medical device security failures can have direct physical consequences.

22% of healthcare organizations have experienced cyberattacks that directly impacted medical devices. When attackers can affect equipment used in patient care, the stakes extend beyond data theft to patient safety.

Evolving Threat Tactics

Attackers are adapting their methods to maximize pressure on healthcare targets:

Data corruption over encryption. Some groups have moved beyond encrypting data to corrupting backups and damaging infrastructure. The goal is maximizing operational impact to increase payment likelihood. Hospitals with good backup practices still face extended downtime when attackers deliberately corrupt recovery systems.

Rapid exfiltration. New attack patterns emphasize speed—stealing sensitive data in minutes rather than the days or weeks that older campaigns required. Healthcare organizations with limited monitoring capabilities may not detect exfiltration until attackers announce the breach.

AI-enhanced targeting. Attackers increasingly use AI to identify misconfigurations, generate malware variants, and customize attacks for specific EHR systems or medical devices. This automation compresses the timeline from initial access to impact.

The Cost of Healthcare Breaches

Healthcare data breaches carry the highest average cost of any sector—$9.8 million per incident in 2024, up from $6.5 million in 2019. Projections suggest this will exceed $12 million by the end of 2026.

These costs include:

• Incident response and forensic investigation
• System restoration and recovery
• Regulatory fines and legal settlements
• Patient notification and credit monitoring
• Reputational damage and patient loss
• Clinical disruption during recovery

The 57 million individuals affected by healthcare breaches in 2025 represent a substantial portion of the U.S. population. At current rates, most Americans will have their medical data exposed at some point.

Defensive Priorities

Healthcare security teams operate with limited resources against sophisticated adversaries. Prioritization matters:

Segment clinical networks. Medical devices, clinical workstations, and administrative systems should occupy separate network segments. Ransomware that enters through a phishing email shouldn't be able to reach imaging systems or infusion pumps.

Protect backup integrity. Attackers specifically target backups to maximize recovery time. Air-gapped or immutable backups—stored offline or in append-only storage—provide recovery options even when attackers gain administrative access.

Assess vendor security. The 30% increase in attacks targeting healthcare vendors reflects attacker recognition that suppliers often have weaker security than the hospitals they serve. Vendor security assessments and contract requirements for security practices help address this exposure.

Inventory and monitor medical devices. You can't protect devices you don't know exist. Asset inventory should include network-connected medical equipment, with monitoring for unusual behavior that might indicate compromise.

Practice incident response. Tabletop exercises that include clinical leadership help organizations respond effectively when attacks occur. Decisions about paying ransoms, communicating with patients, and maintaining care during outages shouldn't be made for the first time during an actual incident.

Plan for extended outages. Even organizations that refuse to pay ransoms need recovery plans. Downtime procedures, paper-based workflows, and mutual aid agreements with other facilities help maintain patient care during system restoration.

The Path Forward

Healthcare cybersecurity requires sustained investment in an environment where resources are constrained and priorities compete. Security improvements must be balanced against clinical needs, regulatory requirements, and financial pressures.

The 2026 threat environment will likely include faster AI-enhanced attacks, continued targeting of vendors and medical devices, and evolving extortion tactics designed to maximize pressure. Organizations that build security fundamentals now—network segmentation, backup protection, vendor oversight, incident response capability—will be better positioned to withstand what comes next.

The alternative—reactive security that responds to each breach without addressing underlying weaknesses—guarantees continued vulnerability in a sector where the stakes include patient lives.