Comparitech’s Q3 roundup concludes that in the third quarter of 2026, ransomware attacks against the healthcare industry “rose by 40 percent when compared to Q2 2026 … and more than doubled … when compared to the same period last year.” This computes to 3.33 attacks per day.
The attacks were against hospitals, clinics, direct care providers, pharmaceutical/medical manufacturers, medical billing providers, and health tech companies.
The U.S. had the highest number of attacks in the world (185), which was an increase of 64% from Q2 to Q3 2026. And these were only the “confirmed” attacks, which is when the victim publicly discloses the attack that involved ransomware; or the victim publicly acknowledges a cyber attack that matches a claim by a ransomware group.
These statistics do not include attacks that are never publicly acknowledged by an organization, which means the statistics are undoubtedly higher.
The health care industry continues to get hammered by ransomware attacks. Core defense strategies are crucial in protecting against cyber- attacks, including ransomware attacks. These strategies include:
- Robust backups;
- Network segmentation;
- Access control & zero trust;
- Endpoint protection;
- Patch & vulnerability management;
- Employee hygiene, training and education; and
- Incident response planning.
In response to the dramatic increase in ransomware attacks against the healthcare industry, IT professionals working in that sector would do well to understand the increased risk and prepare for an attack by implementing the above strategies.