Key Trend Reshaping the Healthcare Industry: AI-Driven Cybersecurity Modernization

Continuing our blog series on some of the top healthcare trends of 2025, let’s unpack our first trend on how the surge in frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks, particularly on healthcare institutions, is triggering a well-overdue modernization of identity verification practices. In 2024, high-profile breaches targeting major healthcare organizations underscored the vulnerability of healthcare data. 

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many shifts in consumer behaviors, including drastically increased demand for greater digital engagement with providers through new healthcare mobile apps, websites and call centers. Digital engagement was actually necessary because face-to-face interaction was limited during the pandemic. And with that digital engagement, consumers expected a smooth online experience with healthcare sites. One survey revealed that a bad digital experience with a provider organization can ruin the entire patient-provider interaction, while another study found that more than 50% of respondents prefer to use a mobile app to manage healthcare appointments, prescriptions and medical records. 

These major deviations generated a serious challenge – although hackers and cybercriminals specifically target healthcare organizations to exploit copious amounts of data, consumers require convenient digital access to their medical data. Given that consumers expect a similar digital experience that other industries deliver while simultaneously demanding secure interactions, healthcare leaders seek to provide a patient experience that mimics consumerism in other industries. Growing consumer ownership of medical records, digital portal expansion, interoperability and other industry trends necessitate healthcare organizations to effectively protect patient data from exposure to bad actors.

While ecommerce and banking have modernized their consumer interactions to mitigate this risk, many healthcare institutions still leverage older or more conservative identity verification methodologies to avoid adding any additional barriers to patients accessing their healthcare records. Despite advancements in the industries stated above, healthcare has lagged in adopting modern identity verification practices, often prioritizing ease of access for patients over robust security. A 2023 survey highlighted this implementation delay, with 75% of healthcare professional respondents indicating their employers prioritized investing in digital technology but had insufficient resources or planning in data breach prevention protocols. 

Ransomware attacks have nearly doubled since 2022, and the healthcare industry’s vulnerability persists as a result of the wealth of available sensitive data. To make matters worse, the existing digital infrastructure is not currently equipped to defend modern security threats. In 2023, the cost per breach in healthcare peaked at $10.9 million. One year later, in 2024, healthcare remains the leading industry with the highest cost per breach, with hackers targeting big names including large health plans and hospital systems.  

The rise of sophisticated identity theft schemes has been fueled by the availability of demographic data and forged documents on the dark web, as well as the application of generative AI. This has made it easier for fraudsters to bypass traditional identity verification methods, posing a significant challenge for healthcare institutions. 

The emergence of AI-driven deepfakes has become a disruptive force, challenging the very essence of identity verification. AI-driven deepfakes have compounded the issue, allowing fraudulent identity presentations, such as deepfake selfies, to defeat biometric verification systems. To flip the script, AI-enabled tools can be leveraged to protect against fraud by using the same kinds of tools – GenAI and predictive analytics are AI-driven solutions used to detect emerging threats and schemes. 

For added protection to counter these threats, identity verification vendors are deploying robust liveness detection techniques, which can be active (e.g., prompting the user to turn their head) or passive (e.g., assessing micro movements or depth perspective) to ensure that the selfie is being taken by a live person. This type of biometric authentication is gaining popularity in the industry for its accuracy and protection, however, in and of itself, can be burdensome for some healthcare consumers, particularly for those who need to log-in and verify their identity on a regular basis and those who are less tech savvy. 

Instead, to promote enhanced health equity healthcare organizations should consider using identity verification solutions that can evaluate devices, behaviors and digital identifiers that do not present much friction for consumers. Adding biometric or other identity authentication could be seen as an outlet when an identity is “risky” or needs more evaluation.  Enforcing strong multi-factor authentication in every system can help mitigate the impact of a compromised identity. Additionally, protecting sensitive data both in transit and at rest through robust encryption and mature key management processes can act as a layered control to ensure that data cannot be improperly accessed if it eventually leaks through any other mechanism. Finally, because threat actors can be very resourceful and sophisticated and find ways into the environment containing sensitive data despite the measures described, segmenting the environments to prevent lateral movement and continuous vigilance though adequate attack detection mechanisms is key. These innovative strategies will create unavoidable hurdles for cybercriminals while delivering a better consumer experience.

To address imminent cybersecurity threats, healthcare companies will need to modernize their systems by investing in upgraded solutions that are not only valuable but easy to use. When attempting to prevent unpredictable data breaches, it is exceedingly crucial for identity verification vendors to stay one step ahead by taking a proactive approach. Indispensable options like customizable identity verification, multi-layered defense intelligence profiling and multi-factor authentication exist to combat healthcare’s toughest cybersecurity challenges.  

In 2025, we will see healthcare organizations modernize their approach to prioritize patient privacy and safeguard data. To avoid burdening patients with complex processes, industry leaders will likely increase adoption of digital and AI-driven solutions that can verify patient identity seamlessly without disrupting care engagement. Healthcare institutions need to prioritize frictionless digital and AI-driven identity verification solutions. These solutions will enhance patient privacy and trust without disrupting the patient experience, ensuring a balance between security and accessibility.