The health care industry is where you go to heal if you get physically injured or attacked. But what happens when the health care industry is injured or attacked – not physically but digitally?

The answer is that hundreds of millions of people’s medical records can be exposed. In fact, there’s no “can be” about it. It’s already happening.

Minnesota-based Change Healthcare was hacked in 2024, with an astonishing 192 million patients having their health records compromised by a hacking incident.

You read that right: One hundred ninety-two million patient records.

That was the largest breach of patient records in history, by far, although it was certainly not the only significant one in recent years. The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan saw 13.4 million patient records exposed in 2024, while Colorado-based Welltok Inc. experienced a breach in 2023 that put 14.7 million patient records in the hands of hackers.

There have been more than 100 breaches in the past several years affecting 1 million or more patients each. And these were attacks against well-established companies who had full-time IT departments and strict HIPAA-compliance policies and procedures.

Cyber attackers know where they can inflict the most pain, and recent reports say they are focusing more than ever on the health care sector. The organization Health-ISAC recently reported that in the third quarter of 2025 the industry saw an uptick in threats associated with broader events and growing risks.

One of those includes the notorious Shai-Halud worm, which is distributed through malicious NPM packages and embeds itself in other packages owned by the target. From there it exfiltrates data to public GitHub repositories.

Another common attack on the health care industry has involved phishing attacks using QR codes that hide malicious links within images – thus bypassing much of the security that would otherwise stop them.

When patient records are compromised, it’s a nightmare both for the patients and for the providers.

UBX Cloud clients are protected by a cybersecurity platform that is based on UTM Stack, which combines network layer, infrastructure, end-user, and AI-based protection. It combines alerting and mitigation into a single interface that makes everything completely visible.

There is much any organization can do to protect itself – from regular patching to network segmentation to employee education on phishing attacks. But you also need a system that can sniff out threats, and can recognize the most serious kinds and take action immediately.

The health care industry has invested heavily in information technology and in solid professionals to manage it. But not every IT professional is a cybersecurity expert. Many are top-notch at designing networks that can operate efficiently and store data effectively, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are up to speed on the cyberthreats that evolve and emerge on a daily basis.

It’s critical for top executives within health care organizations to understand the difference, and to make sure they have the people, the tools, the strategies and the discipline to stay ahead of cyberthreats. Hundreds of millions of patients’ data should provide more than enough incentive.

But the threats are only becoming more lethal and deceptive. As the health care industry relies increasingly on its digital systems to operate, attackers have the ability to shut down entire enterprises. Both the financial and human cost of that are too horrible to contemplate.

Get on top of this now. We’re here to help.