Healthcare’s cyber resilience challenge and how data can help
In today’s interconnected healthcare environment, a cyberattack is not just a technology failure; it can determine whether a hospital can admit patients, access records, schedule procedures, bill for care and maintain trust during disruption. Cyber incidents, vendor outages and recovery performance now provide measurable insight into how well healthcare organizations can withstand operational stress. For hospital leaders, the question is no longer whether the organization is secure, but whether it can continue delivering care when critical systems or vendors fail.
Cyber incidents reveal broader risks
Cyber incidents are no longer isolated security events; they are exposing weaknesses in the operating model hospitals rely on to deliver care. According to American Hospital Association data, more than 70% of hospitals experienced a significant cyber or vendor-related disruption in the past year, and the typical healthcare ransomware incident now results in more than three weeks of operational disruption. For hospital systems, that level of downtime can affect scheduled procedures, clinical documentation, claims processing and patient communications long after systems are restored.
Such operational disruptions are why many healthcare leaders now view cyber risk as a patient safety issue, not only a security issue. In the Omega Systems Healthcare IT Landscape Report, 52% of healthcare leaders said they believe a patient fatality resulting from a cyberattack is inevitable within the next five years.
Becker’s Hospital Review reported that healthcare organizations worldwide faced 410 ransomware attacks in the first half of 2026, up nearly 14% from the previous six-month period, with the U.S. accounting for 225 attacks—more than half of the global total. The cyber threat pattern also appears to be shifting. Attacks on healthcare businesses such as billing companies, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical firms and health technology vendors rose nearly 35% globally, signaling that threat actors are increasingly targeting the broader ecosystem hospitals depend on to operate.
Third-party vulnerabilities expose resilience gaps
The shift in targets matters because healthcare relies on a complex network of vendors, platforms and data flows to deliver care and sustain operations. Omega Systems’ 2026 Healthcare IT Landscape Report found that 85% of healthcare practices experienced at least one third-party or “vendor-of-a-vendor” disruption in the past year, while 63% do not continuously monitor digital supply chains. The result is a dangerous confidence gap: 70% of leaders said they were confident in their vendors’ cybersecurity posture, even as many lacked real-time visibility into vendor risk.
What cybersecurity data signals about organizational resilience
Taken together, these data points show that cybersecurity performance is becoming a practical measure of whether a health system can sustain care delivery under stress. Cyber incidents, vendor disruptions, recovery performance and breach trends can reveal vulnerabilities in the systems, partners and workflows healthcare organizations depend on to operate.
HIPAA Journal’s coverage of the same IT landscape report sharpened the operational implications: if an electronic medical record system goes down, 53% of respondents said billing, claims and scheduling would stop immediately, while 47% cited immediate patient-safety and malpractice concerns from loss of access to patient histories and medication lists. This is where cyber risk becomes operational risk: when a single system outage can immediately disrupt revenue cycle, patient access and clinical decision-making.
The breach data reinforces the same conclusion. HIPAA Journal reported that 772 large healthcare data breaches were reported to OCR in 2025, a new annual record, and that hacking and IT incidents accounted for more than 80% of large healthcare breaches in 2025 based on OCR portal data.
For executives, the point is not whether the line moves slightly up or down in a single quarter; it is that the data shows persistent exposure, rising third-party concentration risk and increasing consequences for clinical, financial and operational continuity.
From cyber insight to operational resilience
Healthcare organizations cannot prevent every cyber incident, vendor outage or third-party disruption. But they can use cybersecurity data to understand where operations are most exposed, strengthen critical dependencies and improve recovery readiness.
As digital interdependencies continue to expand, cybersecurity metrics should become part of the executive resilience agenda. Leaders can use these insights to identify weak points before they become operational, financial or patient care crises. To that end, key considerations for healthcare leaders include:
- Treat cybersecurity as an enterprise risk analytics discipline: Analyze cyber metrics alongside operational, financial and clinical indicators to identify risks before they disrupt care delivery or business operations.
- Connect cyber performance to patient safety and continuity of care: Executive dash boards should measure not only security events, but also the potential impact of system outages on clinical operations, patient access and care delivery.
- Quantify financial exposure from cyber disruption: CFOs should understand thepotential impact of downtime on scheduling, revenue cycle operations, claims processing, cash flow and critical vendor dependencies.
- Strengthen cyber resilience, not just security controls: CIOs and CISOs should focus on identity protection, network segmentation, recovery testing, incident-response readiness and continuous third-party risk monitoring to reduce operational disruption when attacks occur.
- Require evidence that the organization can operate through disruptions: Boards should move beyond asking whether the organization is compliant and instead ask whether the data demonstrates the organization can maintain critical operations and continue serving patients during and after a significant cyber event.
- Use cybersecurity data as an early warning system: External trends in ransomware and other cyberattacks, along with internal data on vulnerability exposure, recovery performance and third-party risk can provide indicators of future operational and financial stress.
The goal is not simply to report cyber risk more effectively; it is to use the data to strengthen the organization’s ability to keep caring for patients when disruption occurs.
For more on this topic, read the following: Addressing growing and inevitable cyberthreats in health care and AI risk and health care third parties: Addressing exposure across operations.
RSM US contributor: Lenny Levy, managing director, risk consulting