Our healthcare clients, spanning payers, pharma, providers, and software and services, face immense pressure to innovate. They must meet board expectations, implement AI, and create five-year roadmaps, all while maintaining compliance in a heavily regulated industry.
These organizations are at the forefront of treating cancer, increasing data interoperability, and creating solutions for precision medicine. They don’t have time to comb through a barrage of alerts from potential cyber threats, which are increasing in speed, sophistication, and impact with the rise of AI.
That’s why we’re providing a complimentary copy of the Gartner® report, “How to Respond to the 2025–2026 Threat Landscape,” to offer timely and actionable insights for healthcare cybersecurity leaders, including providers, payers, and healthcare software and services professionals.
At ClearDATA, we believe this report will help security leaders understand these dynamics, enabling them to build stronger data protection strategies that safeguard sensitive information and drive innovation. Let’s dive into the main themes and explore how you can apply these insights to your organization’s strategy.
How to Respond to the 2025-2026 Threat Landscape
Why Healthcare Data Security Is More Critical Than Ever
Key Risks Impacting Healthcare Data Security
The threat landscape shifts rapidly as bad actors adopt new technologies. Healthcare organizations manage some of the most sensitive data in any industry. A failure in healthcare data security doesn’t just result in financial loss; it can directly impact patient safety and operational continuity.
Identity Impersonation Using Deepfakes
Unauthorized access remains one of the biggest threats to PHI data security, and generative AI makes it easier than ever for an attacker to create synthetic content. Attackers are increasingly targeting:
- Attacks on contact centers: Bad actors use synthetic voices to impersonate patients or high-value targets, attempting to bypass voice recognition controls and take over accounts.
- Identity verification subversion: Attackers use deepfake videos to match stolen ID documents, compromising the account creation or credential recovery processes.
- Executive impersonation: Cybercriminals mimic the voice or face of healthcare executives to pressure staff into transferring funds or sharing sensitive data.
AI Application Compromise and Adversarial Prompting
As a healthcare organization adopts AI to improve patient care and operational efficiency, new attack surfaces emerge. AI consumption, whether through third-party services or custom-built applications, requires strict governance.
- Attackers frequently target AI hosting infrastructure and software supply chains.
- “Prompt injection” remains a major concern, where adversaries insert hidden instructions into a chatbot to bypass security guardrails and generate harmful outputs.
Ransomware and Extortionware
Ransomware continues to plague the healthcare industry, often resulting in devastating operational downtime. In our view, the report outlines a critical shift toward “extortionware,” where attackers skip encryption entirely and go straight to data theft and extortion.
- Threat actors exploit misconfigured internet-facing services, weak passwords, and lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to gain initial access.
- Attackers weaponize breach disclosure rules and data protection laws to pressure victims into paying.
This insight stresses the importance of strengthening preventative controls, starting with MFA, and investing in identity threat detection.
API Abuse
Modern healthcare applications rely heavily on APIs to connect services and share data. The report identifies API abuse as a potential concern for healthcare data security.
- API traffic is growing faster than most security teams can manage, leaving many APIs undiscovered and unprotected.
- Attackers use automated tools to exploit public-facing APIs, scraping sensitive data and brute-forcing accounts.
Security teams must integrate API security early in the development lifecycle, moving beyond simple runtime controls.
Aligning Insights with Healthcare Cybersecurity Needs
For CIOs, CTOs, and InfoSec leaders in healthcare, these insights map directly to everyday operational and compliance challenges. Healthcare organizations handle highly sensitive protected health information (PHI). A successful breach does not just result in financial loss; it jeopardizes patient safety and trust.
As cybercriminals refine their tactics using AI and automation, healthcare cybersecurity leaders must adapt their defense strategies. ClearDATA believes the Gartner® report, “How to Respond to the 2025–2026 Threat Landscape,” offers a vital lens through which to view these upcoming challenges and ensure healthcare data security in the cloud.
The report encourages organizations to stop treating incidents as isolated events, and instead analyze the broader landscape. By understanding these emerging threats, your healthcare organization can confidently accelerate its cloud migrations, ensure continuous HIPAA and HITRUST compliance, and ultimately protect the patients who rely on them.
A Proactive Approach to Healthcare Data Security
As healthcare organizations accelerate cloud adoption and AI innovation, healthcare data security has become a top priority. Modern healthcare environments are complex, distributed, and data-driven. From multi-cloud infrastructure to API-connected applications, organizations must ensure secure healthcare data across every layer of their ecosystem while maintaining strict compliance with HIPAA and HITRUST requirements.
It’s time to embrace innovation, reduce risk, and cut costs with ClearDATA. Our seamless multi-cloud integration, continuous security monitoring, and healthcare compliance empower you to lead. Partner with ClearDATA for world-class care and total peace of mind, no matter where your data resides.
Disclaimer: Gartner, How to Respond to the 2025–2026 Threat Landscape,By Jeremy D’Hoinne, John Collins, 3 June 2025
Gartner is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
