See what attackers see in your county, your state, and your district, and where to act first. This is Project Meridian: what hackers see when they “drop by” U.S. hospitals and clinics.
Hospitals may lock their front doors at night. But healthcare entities’ internet-connected systems stay open around the clock.
Attackers know that a hospital’s internet-facing systems are always open. They scan for outdated software, weak logins, and leaked passwords, then they take the path of least resistance — whether that’s a direct strike or breaking in through a supplier. When hackers lock up a hospital’s systems, ambulances divert, surgeries are delayed, and staff go back to paper medical records. Patients pay the price.
What has been missing is a way to see how it all connects: the shared suppliers, shared infrastructure, and shared vulnerabilities that let one failure impact multiple hospitals that prevent many patients from seeking the care they need — especially in rural communities.
Project Meridian is SecurityScorecard’s solution. It maps cyber risk by location, using only what any malicious attacker on the internet can see. This allows leaders to determine where risk is concentrated and which fixes reach furthest across systems that depend on one another. This report applies it to 39,319 healthcare records across 2,979 U.S. counties.
Key findings:
- Most graded healthcare entities do well. Of the 7,818 records with a security grade, 62.5% earn an A or B.
- Many healthcare entities do not do well. About 1 in 6 earns a D or F.
- Known threats are common. About 1 in 7 records shows a vulnerability that malicious threat actors are already using in real attacks.
- A good grade isn’t the full story. In our Texas sample, one hospital system earned an A while running some of the most dangerous vulnerabilities on live systems.
- Shared suppliers spread risk. In Texas, 11 of 12 hospital groups use Microsoft, and the same older web vulnerability appeared at five of them.
- Rural clinics have less margin for error. They score a D or F more often than urban hospitals, meaning patients often have no nearby alternative.
Who this report is for
The information in this report can also be applied to your state, your city, or your county’s footprint.
- Hospital and clinic leaders: See your risk and follow a 30-day action plan. Our team can run the same analysis on your organization’s footprint.
- State and local officials: Use the state-by-state view and the Texas deep dive to find where risk is concentrated. We can map your state, city, or county.
- Lawmakers: Review our recommendations on where you can reduce risk the most. We can walk you through what the data shows for your district.
SecurityScorecard’s Project Meridian is a geospatial intelligence platform that shows cyber and physical risk across the nation’s 16 critical infrastructure sectors as one connected system.
Download the healthcare report now by filling out this form.
Set up a demo today to learn where risk is concentrated in your area and what to fix first.
Note: Healthcare entities in the report are not named. Observations are made from outside each organization and invite verification; they do not establish a breach or patient harm.
