Top Reported Data Security Risks in the Age of COVID-19

Abstract

Data has been collected and stored for thousands of years. Securing data during the digital age has remained difficult. Research shows that in 2018 there was over 33 zettabytes of data, which is approximately an equivalent to 129 billion 256GB mobile devices of data. Risk management in recent years has made attempts at balancing data security risks with organizational business and budgetary requirements. This research examines high probability data security threats and mitigations. It then reports on the threats in connection with the top United States healthcare data breaches reported during the COVID outbreak to the Health and Human Services (HHS) between June 11, 2020 and June 11, 2021. The data analysis shows that there were nine breaches of over a million affected individuals reported to HHS affecting 15,936,679 individuals in total. Five-million individuals is approximately larger than the populations of Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago combined. We connect the common security risks with the reports of these incidents to gain insights into common network security concerns and inform future network architectures and risk mitigations.