Why does cybersecurity matter for global health? The global health sector is one of the most targeted industries for cyber attacks, especially as it has an immense amount of personal information in health records, while the criticality of health organizations provides leverage to ransomware attackers. The COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified the number of cyber attacks against healthcare organizations and the spread of misinformation and disinformation. Cyber attacks have major financial implications for the global health sector, and can negatively impact patient quality of care and health outcomes when hackers restrict access to patient data or take essential services offline. A recent global survey showed that the average cost of a data breach in the healthcare industry was close to $6.45 million, meaning that healthcare organizations generally suffer costs from data breaches that are “60% higher than the cross-industry average.” Patient privacy is also threatened, as medical records provide one of the most complete collections of personal information for any given individual. There is a huge global black market for these records, which are maliciously used in numerous ways, including for identity theft, blackmail, and surveillance.
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