Ghost Users Haunt Healthcare Firms

Data security hygiene severely lacking among healthcare firms, new research shows.

More than three-quarters (77%) of healthcare companies have 500 or more accounts with passwords that never expire, while 79% have more than 1,000 ghost users — user and service accounts that are inactive but still enabled, according to new Varonis research.

The data security report, which analyzed 3 billion files across 58 hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, and biotechnology companies, also found nearly 20% of all files are accessible to every employee.

The average healthcare organization has 31,000 sensitive files — including those that include HIPAA-protected information, financial data, and proprietary research — open to everyone, according to a summary of the findings.

The full findings can be found here. 

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Recommended Reading:

More Insights

Read More HERE