And in late October, Baystate Health in Massachusetts announced that on August 22, it “learned that a phishing email had been sent to several Baystate employees allowing hackers to access some employees’ email accounts.”

Data on 13,000 patients was contained in the emails exposed to the cyberthieves.


In August, Arizona-based Banner Health announced it had been hit by a massive data hack beginning June 17. This had affected the records of as many as 3.7 million patients, health insurance plan members, food and drink customers, doctors and others.

“The attackers targeted payment card data, including cardholder name, card number, expiration date and internal verification code, as the data was being routed through affected payment processing systems,” Banner stated.

In February, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles fell prey to ransomware, ultimately paying a $17,000 ransom to reclaim its computer network after an attack.

"The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and administrative functions was to pay the ransom and obtain the decryption key. In the best interest of restoring normal operations, we did this," Hollywood Presbyterian wrote in a statement at the time.

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