Opinion: Escalating cyberattacks threaten US healthcare systems

Imagine a hostile nation-state with your psychiatric records. Or an organized crime ring with your child's medical file. Or a disgruntled employee with your medical insurance information. It's scary but true. Cyber criminals—from unhappy employees to the most sophisticated hackers—are targeting healthcare data, findings from the Fifth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy & Security of Healthcare Data indicate. And no healthcare organization, from an 18-bed county hospital in Illinois to healthcare insurer CareFirst to insurance giant Anthem, is immune to these attacks. Without fear or favor, these criminals want to hack into healthcare systems to seize your medical data either to make a profit or to expose the security vulnerabilities of the U.S. healthcare system.