ArticleJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2021
The relationship between cybersecurity ratings and the risk of hospital data breaches.
Article in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Media Framing and Portrayals of Ransomware Impacts on Informatics, Employees, and Patients: Systematic Media Literature Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Climate change, security, privacy, and data sharing: Important areas for advocacy and informatics solutions.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveWe investigated the progression of healthcare cybersecurity over 2014-2019 as measured by external risk ratings. We further examined the relationship between hospital data breaches and cybersecurity ratings. MATERIALS AND
methodsUsing Fortune 1000 firms as a benchmark, time trends in hospital cybersecurity ratings were compared using linear regression. Further, the relationship between hospital data breaches and cybersecurity ratings was modeled using logistic regression. Hospital breach data were collected from US HHS, and cybersecurity ratings were provided by BitSight. The resulting study sample yielded 3528 hospital-year observations.
resultsIn aggregate, we found that hospitals had significantly lower cybersecurity ratings than Fortune 1000 firms, however, hospitals have closed the gap in recent years. We also found that hospitals with the low security ratings were associated with significant risk of a data breach, with the probability of a breach in a given year ranging from 14% to 33%. DISCUSSION: Recent cyber-attacks in healthcare continue to illustrate the need to better secure information systems. While hospitals have reduced cyber risk over the past decade, they remain statistically more vulnerable than the Fortune 1000 firms against botnets, spam, and malware.
conclusionPolicy makers should continue encouraging acute-care hospitals to proactively invest in security controls that reduce cyber risk. Best practices from other sectors like the financial services sector could provide useful guides and benchmarks for improvement.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.