Ex­perts en­cour­age bet­ter 'cy­ber hy­gien­e' as phar­ma breach­es sky­rock­et amid the pan­dem­ic

As the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic thrusts phar­ma com­pa­nies in­to the pub­lic spot­light and ac­cel­er­ates dig­i­ti­za­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts say it al­so places a huge tar­get on their backs. Now, Con­stel­la In­tel­li­gence is re­port­ing a dra­mat­ic rise in breach­es that ex­posed mil­lions of records from top phar­ma gi­ants over the last three years.

An­a­lyz­ing records from 2018 to 2021, Con­stel­la — a dig­i­tal risk pro­tec­tion com­pa­ny — de­tect­ed 9,830 breach­es and leak­ages at the top 20 phar­ma com­pa­nies on the For­tune Glob­al 500 list, which in­cludes J&J, Mer­ck, Pfiz­er and oth­ers. Those breach­es re­sult­ed in over 4.5 mil­lion ex­posed records, about two-thirds of which in­clud­ed per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able in­for­ma­tion. Most of the ex­po­sures (76%) have oc­curred since 2020.

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