If you’re part of the healthcare industry, it’s probably not news that patient records are a high-profile target for cyber criminals. Because this type of data may contain Social Security and credit card numbers, the value of these files may be worth up to 50 times more than other data on the black market. As the number of online health records continues to rise and electronic security remains weak, it’s no surprise that IDC is predicting a jump in cyber attacks for the New Year.

In its recently released FutureScape publication, IDC suggests that as many as one in three consumers will have their healthcare records compromised by cyber attacks in 2016. FutureScape is designed to serve as IDC Health Insights’ roadmap for what healthcare executives should expect to impact business in the next 36 months, and how to prioritize investments related to such predictions. In addition to the valuable personal data, cyber thieves can use patient records to file fraudulent medical claims and access medications for resale.

Currently, FBI statistics indicate that fraud costs the healthcare industry between $74 billion and $247 billion annually. A large part of this is due to the fact that the industry has been slow to adopt technologies available for helping prevent breaches from occurring in the first place. And while attacks on prominent companies like those against Anthem and Premera Blue Cross in 2015 will continue, smaller firms and personal practices are anything but immune to cybercrime.

If you’re in the healthcare field, here are a few tips for helping protect your organization:

  1. Set expectations with your clients/customers, as well as internal staff.By training key stakeholders on how you will communicate with them and what online access they have to records, they are more apt to be unharmed by sophisticated phishing and spear-phishing schemes being used to access sensitive data.
  2. Increase sophistication of your security analytics software.Particularly if you’re part of a larger organization and you have the resources to do so, utilizing threat intelligence monitoring can help you identify potential hacks as they’re happening and ward them off much more successfully.
  3. Implement an enterprise mobility management system.With mobile devices becoming more and more essential to how we do our jobs, it’s critical you evaluate your data security in relation to what’s being accessed and how on both company provided and bring-your-own-device assets alike.
  4. Develop a process to dispose of records in a safe, secure manner.There’s no shortage of horror stories related to paper patient files making their way into public trash receptacles. As you work to develop policies and procedures for protecting your data, be sure that secure disposal and safe records retention aren’t overlooked.