I asked my team at Intellicure earlier this week what are the three most important words were in healthcare data security? I've already given you the answer in the title to this entry, but just like real estate has location, location, location; we have breach, breach, and breach!

You've by now seen one of the many articles that have cited the recent study by the Ponemon Institute titled the "2011 Benchmark Study on Patient Privacy and Data Security". The numbers are so startling that even the NY Times has covered the report. In short, data breaches were significantly on the rise, up 30 percent, and costing the healthcare industry $6.5 billion a year. It is also important to note that the report was commissioned by IDExperts, a company that entered the market to sell identity theft insurance, but is now selling breach prevention and remediation services.

Equally important was that Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said "It is not too surprising that the rate of data loss increased ... we that that finding may not be as negative as it appears, and could be a discovery-rate increase with more control and governance practices and the use of enabling technologies." Leading to the conclusion that the raw breach count increase is at least partially due to better detection capabilities.

The full study can be downloaded here, but the root causes graph is what interested me most.