Significant Internal Threat

Marc Spitler, manager of Verizon Security Research, said the report found that 50 percent of PHI breaches were caused internally, either maliciously or by accident. The top three cases were physical theft (such as stolen devices), errors (such as lost devices) and misuse. Part of what drives the prevalence of insider threats, Spitler said, is that  internal users in health care often have a high degree of access across a wide variety of data within the organization. To combat that, he recommends that solution providers recommend full-disc encryption and backup technologies to their clients.