Healthcare breaches aren’t slowing down. The inbox is still the problem.

Healthcare organizations don’t lack security tools. They lack visibility into how breaches actually happen.

Email remains the most common entry point for healthcare breaches. Phishing, impersonation, and misconfigured inboxes continue to expose patient data, even as cybersecurity budgets grow. The problem is a gap between perceived protection and what attackers are exploiting in practice.

Shadow AI is quietly expanding the attack surface

One of the fastest-growing risks is Shadow AI.

Staff are using AI tools to summarize emails, draft responses, upload documents, and move faster. Most of these tools were never approved by IT or compliance. Many have no clear data handling guarantees. PHI is being copied, pasted, and processed outside controlled systems, often without Compliance teams realizing it.

Shadow AI creates blind spots in logging, monitoring, and incident response. When a breach happens, organizations are left trying to reconstruct data flows that were never documented in the first place.

What the mid-year breach data shows

Paubox’s mid-year breach analysis makes one thing clear. The same email weaknesses keep showing up:

• Inbound phishing that bypasses legacy filters

• Impersonation attacks that exploit trust

• Misconfigurations that leave organizations exposed even after audits

• Overreliance on user behavior instead of automated controls

Add Shadow AI into that mix, and risk compounds quickly.

Healthcare IT teams are operating with incomplete information.

Reducing risk in 2026

Paubox is partnering with Medcurity, a healthcare cybersecurity and compliance firm, for a focused, data-driven live webinar on how breaches are happening and what can realistically be done to reduce risk.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• The most common email-driven breach patterns showing up in recent healthcare incidents

• How Shadow AI is creating unseen security and compliance risk

• Practical tools and tactics that reduce phishing risk without adding friction

Register for the webinar: Analyzing breach trends and reducing risk