The Dangerous Assumption
During a routine Tuesday morning partner meeting at a thriving 5-provider practice in suburban Ohio, cybersecurity surfaces on the agenda once again. The managing partner reviews the security proposal, then sets it aside.
“Eh, we’re five doctors in suburban Ohio. Hackers target the big systems with millions of records, not practices like ours.”
The other partners nod in agreement. The proposal gets tabled for another quarter.
Do you think your practice is protected? Think again.
These cybersecurity myths are putting healthcare practices at serious risk.
Think you’re too small to be noticed? Not quite. As Cybersecurity Awareness Month begins this October, remember: size isn’t a shield.
The difference between practices that thrive and those forced to close after an attack has nothing to do with size. It comes down to understanding how cybercriminals operate and recognizing why small practices check every box on their target list.
Cybercrime runs like a business. Here’s how it targets healthcare.
Here’s something that might change how you think about cybersecurity: today’s hackers aren’t lone wolves targeting specific victims. They’re running organized operations that work more like Amazon than Ocean’s Eleven.
Tim Grelling from Focus Solutions nailed it in our recent webinar when he called healthcare a “volume game.” These criminals develop their attack tools once, then deploy them everywhere. Attacking your five-provider practice costs them exactly the same as attacking a major hospital system. The difference is your defenses probably aren’t as strong, and they know it.
Their automated systems work around the clock, scanning internet-connected devices looking for vulnerabilities. Think of it like fishing with a massive net rather than a single line. Research from the University of Maryland found that hackers attempt to attack computers with internet access every 39 seconds on average.
One healthcare system discovered its threat sensors were picking up about 1,000 attack attempts each day, and those were just the ones they could detect.
The numbers help explain why smaller practices see so much activity. Criminals can successfully access 50 smaller practices in roughly the same time it takes to attempt breaching one well-protected hospital. From their perspective, it’s simple economics: more opportunities with less resistance.
If your practice is part of an Accountable Care Organization (ACO), it shares systems with a hospital network, or uses common cloud vendors, you’re connected to the larger healthcare ecosystem. Criminals understand these connections and sometimes use smaller practices as entry points to reach larger organizations. It’s not personal; it’s just how they operate.
The scope of the issue is significant. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported $12.5 billion in potential cybercrime losses for 2023, though that only includes reported incidents. The actual number is likely higher.
What’s particularly interesting is how professional these operations have become. Many ransomware groups now run like legitimate businesses, complete with customer service departments and affiliate programs. They’ve turned cybercrime into a structured industry.
Why Small Practices Check Every Criminal Box
Let’s talk about why medical practices attract so much unwanted attention. Jeffery Daigrepont from Coker Group explains the brutal reality: “Medical records fetch anywhere between $200 to $300 per record on the dark web.”
To put that in perspective, a practice that’s been around for 10 years typically has about 100,000 patient records in its system. Do the math, and that’s $20-30 million worth of data. That’s not pocket change to criminals looking for their next target.
Why are medical records worth so much more than, say, credit card numbers? They contain comprehensive information that doesn’t change. Your social security number, medical history, insurance details, and demographic data all stay relatively constant over time.
IBM’s 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that healthcare breaches cost an average of $10.93 million to resolve, making healthcare the most expensive industry for data breaches for 14 years running.
The impact on small practices can be particularly challenging. Daigrepont noted that “about 50% of the time, a small practice does not survive after experiencing a significant breach. They usually have to either file for bankruptcy or basically shut down. It’s a difficult reality, but understanding it helps practices prepare properly.”
From a criminal’s perspective, small practices present an appealing opportunity. They have valuable data but typically operate with limited IT resources and may not have dedicated security teams. This combination makes them frequent targets, which is exactly why understanding these risks helps practices protect themselves more effectively.
Why Your Current Defenses Matter More Than Your Size
Small medical practices often find themselves categorized as “soft targets” by cybercriminals, and there’s some truth to this assessment. As we observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month, understanding these vulnerabilities helps practices build better defenses.
Healthcare practices face multiple challenges that criminals know how to exploit. Limited IT resources mean security has to compete with dozens of other priorities. Legacy systems that can’t receive security updates create ongoing vulnerabilities. Budget realities mean security improvements often get pushed to next quarter, then the quarter after that.
The human side of the equation adds another layer of complexity. Staff members register for industry webinars using work emails, which can expose those addresses if the vendor gets breached. Password reuse remains common because managing dozens of unique credentials feels overwhelming. Social engineering works particularly well in healthcare because your staff is trained to help people quickly, and criminals take advantage of that helpful nature.
Tim Grelling from Focus Solutions puts it in perspective: “Why do I want to attack someone that has a moat and a big gate when I’ve got other people that the front door’s open and the lights on?”
The Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found 60% of breaches involved a human element. Healthcare workers face particularly sophisticated attacks because criminals understand they’re busy, want to help, and are often dealing with urgent situations.
Meanwhile, automated scanning tools run continuously in the background. These tools check for exposed remote desktop connections, unpatched software, misconfigured cloud storage, and weak passwords. Most practices have no idea they’re being scanned until something actually happens.
Ready to discover your actual vulnerability profile? Focus Solutions provides comprehensive security assessments designed specifically for healthcare organizations.
The Economics of Healthcare Cybercrime: A Billion-Dollar Industry
Healthcare now faces organized criminal operations that rival legitimate businesses in how professionally they operate. During Cybersecurity Awareness Month, understanding this professionalization helps practices better grasp what they’re up against.
Medical data has created its own criminal economy, largely because the information stays valuable for so long. A child’s stolen medical record can be used for identity theft for years, often not discovered until they apply for their first job or credit card. This long shelf life makes healthcare data particularly attractive to criminals.
The professionalization extends throughout the ecosystem. Daigrepont shares insight into this business mindset: “Ransomware groups almost act like businesses… some of them have help desks” ensuring victims can successfully pay and recover data. “They want to keep it going. They don’t want to run off their customers.”
Criminal forums even maintain reputation systems where groups that don’t deliver decryption keys after payment get blacklisted by other criminals. This self-policing keeps their ecosystem running smoothly. When criminal operations reach this level of organization, assuming you’re too small to notice becomes risky thinking.
The tactics have evolved too. Take the double extortion model: criminals first encrypt your data and demand payment for decryption. After you pay, they might demand more money or threaten to publish patient records online.
Some groups employ triple extortion, contacting patients directly and threatening to release their medical records unless the patients pay individual ransoms. The Sophos State of Ransomware in Healthcare 2024 report found 67% of healthcare organizations experienced ransomware attacks, with average recovery costs reaching $2.57 million, excluding reputation damage.
The Compliance Trap: Why “Meeting HIPAA” Isn’t Enough
Many practices operate under the assumption that HIPAA compliance equals security. This misconception can leave them exposed to threats the regulation never anticipated.
Tim Grelling explains the gap clearly: Healthcare organizations can be “HIPAA compliant and still be insecure” because the requirements use intentionally broad language. HIPAA mentions “appropriate safeguards” without spelling out what’s actually appropriate for today’s threat landscape.
Think about when HIPAA was created. Enacted in 1996, it came out 11 years before the first iPhone. The regulation couldn’t have anticipated ransomware-as-a-service, cloud computing, or AI-powered attacks.
While HIPAA requires risk assessments, it doesn’t tell you how thorough they need to be or how often to do them. Ten practices might handle the same requirement ten different ways, all technically compliant but with varying levels of actual protection.
Today’s threats operate completely outside HIPAA’s framework. AI-powered phishing adapts to match your communication style. Supply chain attacks come through your trusted vendors. Insider threats use legitimate credentials you gave them. Zero-day vulnerabilities pop up faster than any policy can address.
HIPAA gives you the regulatory baseline, not complete protection. The documentation keeps auditors satisfied, but criminals know that many practices mistake compliance for comprehensive security, and they take advantage of that confusion.
Your 90-Day Security Reality Check
October’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month is an ideal time to strengthen your defenses. This practical roadmap works with your real-world constraints while building meaningful protection.
Week 1-2: Know Your Reality
Map every system containing patient data, including forgotten backup drives and employee laptops. Run compromised credential checks using Have I Been Pwned for all practice emails. Document administrative access across all systems; the results often surprise even IT-savvy practices.
Week 3-4: Immediate Wins
Deploy multi-factor authentication on email, EHR, practice management, and remote access without exceptions. Replace complex password requirements with memorable passphrases that resist cracking. Begin weekly “security moments” in staff meetings, sharing real healthcare phishing examples.
Month 2: Shore Up the Foundation
Create a vendor responsibility matrix documenting security responsibilities for each service. Review cyber insurance policies for coverage gaps, since many exclude common attack scenarios. Consolidate redundant systems to reduce attack surfaces.
Month 3: Build Resilience
Develop incident response plans with specific roles, contacts, and decision trees. Implement healthcare-specific security training using real medical scenarios. Consider how unified technology management eliminates security gaps between systems.
Perfect security doesn’t exist. The goal is becoming expensive enough to attack that criminals target easier victims.
From Target to Protected: Your Path Forward
The idea that small practices fly under the radar simply isn’t true anymore. You now understand why 100,000 patient records represent millions in potential value to criminals. You’re aware that half of breached small practices don’t make it through the aftermath.
Automation and organized criminal operations have eliminated any safety in being small. Every connected practice shows up on automated scans, ranked by vulnerability and potential value.
Becoming a protected practice doesn’t require perfection. Each security improvement you make, every staff member you train, and every system you properly configure makes your practice less appealing to automated attacks.
Your patients trust you with their most sensitive information. Your team counts on the practice for their livelihoods. Your community depends on having access to your care. They deserve real protection based on actual threats, not just checkbox compliance.
Focus Solutions specializes in helping healthcare organizations build comprehensive protection. As your Unified Partner for Managed IT, Managed Security, and Managed Data services, you get one team that sees your complete technology picture.
When your IT, security, and data work together instead of in silos, vulnerabilities get caught before they become problems. We understand how healthcare actually operates.
This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, it’s time for a reality check. Being small doesn’t make you invisible to cybercriminals. Focus Solutions has been protecting medical practices just like yours, exclusively in healthcare. We know exactly what it takes to move from vulnerable to protected, and we can show you.
Ready to Move from Soft Target to Protected Practice?
It’s time to move beyond hoping you’re too small to notice. Focus Solutions helps transform medical practices from attractive targets into protected healthcare organizations.
Book your Security Risk Assessment today. We’ll identify your three highest-risk vulnerabilities and provide a practical roadmap to address them this quarter, without disrupting patient care or breaking your budget.
The best time to strengthen your security was before you needed it. The second-best time is right now.
Because in cybersecurity, small practices need protection just as much as large qsystems, sometimes more.
