Since the beginning of this year, healthcare providers, insurance companies and their business partners have reported 664 data breaches to the federal government, exceeding the total number of breaches reported in 2020.

The latest data from the Civil Rights Office of the Ministry of Human Services shows that since the regulator began to collect statistics in 2010, the number of health care data breaches has occurred in a year. This year’s total exceeds last year’s single event.

The impact of these violations on patients has been the worst in more than a year since there is no record. The data of nearly 43 million patients were leaked in 2021, less than half of the number recorded in 2015, when bad actors accessed the confidential information of 112.5 million people. However, this year did occur more data breaches than the previous two years.