Healthcare Data Breaches

Did you know that you could be owed compensation if your personal information or privacy was compromised by healthcare data breaches? By hiring knowledgeable class-action lawyers, like those working at Morgan & Morgan, you can fight for justice, help to protect yourself, and send a message to healthcare companies everywhere about the importance of data security and patient safety.

Unfortunately, healthcare data breaches have increased in recent years due to the vast volume of information that is collected by healthcare companies and stored on their systems. Hospitals and other healthcare organizations are especially susceptible to data breaches and other malware or ransomware attacks.

Recognizing your rights and knowing what to do after a healthcare data breach is extremely important because you may be eligible to recover compensation with the help of a data breach lawyer. A knowledgeable data breach lawyer, like those working at Morgan & Morgan, may also combine your case with others who have suffered similar losses.

For example, if your information was leaked in a healthcare data breach, it could be used by others to exploit or blackmail you. You may also experience lost trust in the breached company because of their poor data protection practices, but even if you move on to a more trusted company, the damage has already been done.

If a healthcare data breach has happened to you, contact Morgan & Morgan today for a free, no-obligation case evaluation to learn more about your legal options.

Scope of Recent Healthcare Data Breaches

Between 2009 and 2021, over 4,400 healthcare data breaches involved 500 or more records, and those are just the ones reported to the United States government HHS Office for Civil Rights. Cybersecurity breaches, overall, hit an all-time high in 2021, exposing many different types of personal patient data to criminals and other hackers.

Overall, when it comes to healthcare data breaches, more than 45 million individuals were affected by healthcare attacks in 2021. That is an increase from 34 million in 2020. The number has also tripled since 2018, and more records are exposed per breach every single year.

Whether it is stealing devices, credential harvesting, or ransomware, the healthcare industry is one of the biggest targets for attackers to monetize personal health information. It can be used to hold a company like a healthcare organization ransom or unable to deliver patient care, or this data can also be sold on the dark web. It is crucial for healthcare organizations to do everything possible to proactively protect private healthcare and personal health information. Security teams should act diligently to minimize the possibility of data breaches and cyber-attacks. However, hacking and IT incidents continue to be the most common cause of data breaches for healthcare organizations.

As someone who has been subjected to a data breach, you may not even realize its initial impact or consequences for you until much later. This is why the knowledgeable class-action healthcare data breach lawyers at Morgan & Morgan evaluate each case individually and determine whether or not you have legal grounds to pursue compensation with the help of an attorney. Knowing that you're not alone and that you have a dedicated lawyer to assist you with this lawsuit may be essential. You and many other people may be able to combine your claims in a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company failed to take appropriate precautions.

Working with knowledgeable class-action lawyers like those at Morgan & Morgan may be the only way for protecting you from negative consequences. You may not even know until it is too late that your information has been leaked to someone else. Although organizations are responsible for informing the government about data breaches of personal health information, this may not always be done or even discovered promptly. This puts you and any other patient who is involved with this healthcare system at risk of having your private details leaked on the web or in other locations.

Our class-action lawyers will investigate your claim and help you to understand the legal consequences associated with these problems. The support of an experienced and qualified lawyer may be essential for helping you to craft a compelling claim against data breach issues.

If you have recently been contacted by a cybercriminal who got access to your personal medical information or if you were recently informed that your information was included in a data breach, start by conducting your own research to understand the scope of the breach and to determine whether or not you have grounds for a legal claim. You may also meet with a healthcare data breach lawyer to discuss the specifics of your case and decide whether or not you intend to move forward with the lawsuit.

You are likely not the only person who was involved in this healthcare data breach, as many reported incidents have involved cases of 500 or more consumers. In these situations, it is very common to include all of these claims together in a class action lawsuit brought by many individuals who were harmed by a company in an attempt to hold that company responsible. A knowledgeable class action lawyer can be an essential component of success in these cases.