Healthcare Ransomware Care Disruptions Reach 74 Percent in 2026

The fifth annual Cyber Insecurity in Healthcare report, published October 13, 2026, by Proofpoint and the Ponemon Institute, delivers a sobering verdict on the state of medical cybersecurity: 74 percent of U.S. healthcare organizations hit by cyberattacks in the past year reported disruptions to patient care. Ransomware, in particular, saw 72 percent of affected organizations experiencing care disruptions, up from 67 percent just one year prior. The findings, drawn from a survey of 705 IT and security practitioners across U.S. healthcare organizations, paint a picture of an industry under siege, where attackers are moving faster than defenders can adapt.

The Numbers Tell a Dangerous Story

The 2026 report examines four attack categories: cloud or account compromise, ransomware, supply chain attacks, and business email compromise. Across all four, the average number of attacks per organization climbed from 43 in 2025 to 51 in 2026, an 18 percent year-over-year increase. The financial toll has risen accordingly, with the average cost of an organization’s most expensive attack growing from $3.9 million to $4.2 million, an increase of nearly 8 percent.

• Care disruptions from ransomware: 72 percent of attacked organizations reported patient care disruptions, up from 67 percent in 2025
• Supply chain attacks had the greatest impact: 90 percent of affected organizations reported care disruptions
• Complications from medical procedures: 53 percent of organizations reporting disruptions cited increased complications
• Longer patient stays: 52 percent of disrupted organizations reported extended hospitalizations
• Delays in tests or procedures: 52 percent of affected organizations experienced delayed diagnostics and treatments

Disruption to normal healthcare operations was the largest cost category, averaging $1.39 million per incident, followed by $1.05 million in idle time and lost productivity. These are not merely financial losses — they represent delayed surgeries, postponed treatments, and longer emergency room waits that directly affect patient outcomes.

Ransom Payments Decline But Suffering Increases

One counterintuitive finding from the report is that ransom payments are declining. Only 31 percent of organizations experiencing ransomware attacks reported paying a ransom in 2026, down from 33 percent the previous year. The average costliest ransom payment also dropped from $1.2 million to $1.1 million. This suggests that organizations are increasingly refusing to pay, driven by a combination of regulatory pressure, law enforcement advisories, and improved backup and recovery capabilities.

However, the refusal to pay has not translated into reduced harm. The 72 percent care disruption rate among ransomware victims actually increased from 67 percent, meaning that while fewer organizations are funding cybercriminals, more patients are experiencing the consequences of prolonged system outages. Among those reporting disruptions, 70 percent cited longer patient stays as a direct result.

Healthcare: The Highest-Value Target for Cybercriminals

Separate threat intelligence from Flare, published October 8, 2026, analyzed over 1,700 ransomware attacks across a two-month window and found healthcare consistently ranked among the top five most-targeted sectors, with approximately 80 percent of observed attacks directed at U.S. organizations. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported 460 ransomware attacks and 182 data breaches against U.S. healthcare in 2025 alone.

The reason healthcare is so attractive to attackers is straightforward: protected health information is the most expensive personally identifiable information on the dark web. Unlike credit card numbers, which can be cancelled and reissued, medical identities cannot be reset. A compromised health record contains permanent data — birth dates, Social Security numbers, medical histories, insurance details — that can be monetized for years through insurance fraud, prescription fraud, and identity theft.

Named ransomware operators actively targeting healthcare include Qilin, The Gentlemen, Akira, DragonForce, and LockBit. These groups employ a range of intrusion techniques, including edge-device exploitation, stolen credentials, remote-management tooling, and double extortion, where data is exfiltrated before systems are encrypted, giving attackers two leverage points for demanding payment.

Cloud Migration Creates New Attack Surfaces

The Proofpoint report also highlights how rapid cloud adoption is expanding the attack surface faster than security teams can protect it. 35 percent of healthcare organizations have moved clinical applications to the cloud, up from 30 percent in 2025, with another 44 percent planning to do so within the next two years. Organizations experienced up to 20 cloud or account compromises on average, and those compromises disrupted patient care for 65 percent of affected respondents.

The healthcare sector is adopting artificial intelligence faster than it is implementing security governance around it, according to the report. This creates a dangerous gap where AI-enabled tools — used for diagnostics, patient communication, and administrative workflows — may introduce vulnerabilities that ransomware operators can exploit before adequate protections are in place.

Global Impact: From Philadelphia to Seoul

The healthcare ransomware crisis extends far beyond the United States. On October 9, 2026, North Philadelphia Health System appeared on The Gentlemen ransomware group’s dark web leak site, joining a growing list of healthcare victims. The Gentlemen, a RaaS operation that emerged in mid-2025, has claimed over 922 victims globally, offering affiliates a 90 percent revenue share that has made it one of the most aggressive groups in the ecosystem.

In South Korea, a parliamentary audit revealed that ransomware attacks on medical institutions rose from 8 cases in 2025 to 14 cases in 2026. At Kangwon National University Hospital, a ransomware attack halted medical services for nearly five hours. Hwasun Chonnam National University Hospital reported the leakage of 298 cases of personal information. The National Emergency Medical Information Network, which connects emergency facilities nationwide, experienced three separate disruptions in 2026, with one recovery taking up to 32 hours.

South Korea’s Minister of Health and Welfare, Jeong Eun-kyeong, acknowledged the severity of the situation during the audit, stating there is “clearly a limit to keeping up with the speed of attackers.” The ministry plans to introduce what it calls “attack-type cybersecurity,” a proactive approach that identifies vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

What Organizations Must Do Now

The convergence of these findings points to an urgent need for healthcare organizations to rethink their cybersecurity posture. Several priorities emerge from the data:

• Segment networks: The Flare report notes that legacy, unpatched Windows systems and flat networks without segmentation are the most common vulnerabilities exploited by ransomware groups. Segmenting clinical networks from administrative ones can contain the blast radius of an attack.
• Patch edge devices: Attackers are exploiting known vulnerabilities in VPN appliances, firewalls, and remote management tools. Timely patching of CVEs in Fortinet, SonicWall, ConnectWise, and other widely deployed products is essential.
• Implement zero trust: With cloud adoption accelerating and remote access becoming routine, zero trust architecture — where every access request is verified regardless of its origin — is becoming a necessity rather than a luxury.
• Invest in immutable backups: The decline in ransom payments suggests that organizations with robust, tested backup and recovery capabilities can refuse payment without sacrificing operational continuity.
• Train staff on phishing and social engineering: Stolen credentials remain a primary initial access vector. Regular security awareness training can reduce the risk of successful phishing attacks that lead to ransomware deployment.

The Stakes Have Never Been Higher

What makes the 2026 findings particularly alarming is the documented link between cyberattacks and patient harm. Studies cited in the Flare analysis show increased in-hospital mortality during ransomware incidents. When electronic health records are inaccessible, imaging systems are down, and billing platforms are frozen, clinicians are forced to work without the information they need to make critical decisions. Emergency departments divert patients. Surgeries are postponed. Medication records become unavailable.

The ENISA reported that ransomware accounted for 54 percent of European health-sector incidents in 2023 and 45 percent in 2024, demonstrating that this is a global crisis, not a regional one. As long as healthcare data remains the most valuable commodity on the dark web and medical systems remain among the most vulnerable critical infrastructure, ransomware operators will continue to target hospitals, clinics, and health networks with increasing sophistication.

The question is no longer whether healthcare organizations will face a ransomware attack, but when — and whether they will be prepared enough to protect their patients when it happens. The 74 percent disruption rate in 2026 suggests that most are not.

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Edited by Palawan @QUE.COM
Website: https://QUE.COM Intelligence
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