A new survey revealed that 44 per cent of HR healthcare leaders from the public sector cited data breaches as one of their top work worries keeping them up at night.
The survey findings carried out by Censuswide Research on behalf of OpenSky, which surveyed IT and HR healthcare leaders across Ireland from the public and private sectors, revealed interestingly that, data breaches are less of a worry in the private sector, affecting only 32 per cent of respondents.
Employee engagement shared second place with three other tasks; staff retention, time-consuming report generation and monitoring employee performance as the most common work worries that keeps HR healthcare leaders from the public sector up at night (40 per cent). Pressure from the CEO was cited as a less worrying prospect at 24 per cent.
These findings were completed before the HSE suffered a ransomware attack, which is causing significant disruption to patients in Ireland. Computers were shut down as a precautionary measure last week and the impact of the attack will continue throughout this week and possibly beyond putting additional pressure on an already stretched health service. As hospitals temporarily return to pen and paper, the survey highlighted how automation is valued within the health sector with 80 per cent of public sector IT healthcare leaders agreeing that automating manual paper processes would ultimately improve the time and care given to patients.
Additionally, the survey also revealed IT healthcare leaders concerns about healthcare tech with a high number (60 per cent) of respondents agreeing that healthcare tech falls behind other industries.
Speaking about the findings, Darren Clarke, Head of Customer Success at OpenSky, said: “Globally cyber security threats are a huge issue for organisations in both the public and private sectors. Unfortunately, here in Ireland we are now seeing this threat materialise before us. What this shows is that the HSE and indeed, other large public sector government agencies are not immune to the significant risks of ransomware attacks.
Our survey findings revealed how much of a worry data breaches are and for good reason too when we consider the huge impact that is being felt at present by patients in Ireland, and the financial implications to the HSE.”
