A Multivariate Frequency–Severity Framework for Healthcare Data Breaches

Data breaches in healthcare have become a substantial concern in recent years and cause millions of dollars in financial losses each year. It is fundamental for government regulators, insurance companies, and stakeholders to understand the breach frequency and the number of affected individuals in each state, as these are directly related to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and state data breach laws. However, an obstacle to studying data breaches in healthcare is the lack of suitable statistical approaches. We develop a novel multivariate frequency-severity framework to analyze breach frequency and the number of affected individuals in this work.