Beazley has published a report outlining data breaches in the first nine months of 2017. The report notes that the highest cause of a data breach in 2017 so far are unintended disclosures, which accounted for 41 percent of all incidents. Beazley stated: “We urge organizations not to ignore this significant risk and to invest time and resources towards employee training.”

Although we hear about the healthcare industry being attacked with hacking, malware and ransomware, the report notes that they accounted for 19 percent of breaches between January and September. Phishing and social engineering attacks have increased, particularly with fraudulent instruction incidents and W-2 phishing scams.

Consistent with our experience, insider threat by employees continues to rise, with employees looking in others’ records or sending information to their personal email accounts or taking information off premises. According to the Beazley report, these incidents account for 15 percent, up from 12 percent last year. These numbers are helpful to the health care industry in determining risk

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