Healthcare low spender on Information Security - Security - Brief Article

Health Management Technology, Feb, 2002

The healthcare industry came out on the low side nationally when it comes to spending on IT security, according to a recent survey of 2,545 information security professionals by Trusecure, Predictive Systems and Information Security magazine. The report indicated that financial institutions, manufacturers, insurance companies and military organizations are increasing security budgets, but healthcare organizations and universities were relatively "security poor."

The 2001 economic downturn didn't help. The survey indicates that nearly one-third of all responding organizations froze security spending during the year. The cutbacks came despite the fact that the number of survey respondents hit by Web server attacks doubled from 2000 to 2001 and that 90 percent of the organizations were infected by viruses, worms, Trojans and other "malware."

An earlier survey by the Computer Security Institute also found that 90 percent of respondents in large corporations and government entities detect security breaches each year. Their respondents indicated 70 percent suffered serious attacks, other than the common viruses and worms--such as theft of property, financial fraud, data or network sabotage.