If you thought the health care breaches were bad, just wait till this year

The Experian 2017  Data Breach Industry Forecast will be the prime target for hackers this year will be the  health care industry. The report says personal medical data is among the most valuable kinds of information to target because health care officials will pay handsomely to get it back once stolen.

Attacks will come in the form of ransomware and range from blocking a provider’s access to patient information and then selling them the key to reopen the data, to selling the data itself on the dark web or leveraging it for identity theft.

In other news, the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reported that last year there were 957 breaches through December 6, 2016, and more than 35 million records have been exposed since the beginning of the year. The total number of reported breaches increased by 56 since ITRC’s last report on November 22.