CEO.CA Chairman's Briefing

Pre-HIMSS26 Copenhagen survey of 284 European hospital cybersecurity buyers finds 82% report very high or extreme attack concern as demand shifts to clinical continuity, identity resilience, ransomware recovery, and supplier-risk protection

CITY OF LONDON, GB / ACCESS Newswire / May 16, 2026 / Black Book Research today released findings from its Pre-HIMSS26 Europe Copenhagen Cybersecurity Demand Pulse Survey, warning that hospital cyber risk across Europe has entered a more dangerous phase: attacks are no longer viewed primarily as privacy events, compliance events, or IT disruptions. They are now being evaluated as direct threats to care delivery.

The survey of 284 self-identified HIMSS26 attendees from European hospital, health system, HIT, clinical-digital, cybersecurity, procurement, risk, and executive respondents attending or evaluating cybersecurity options around HIMSS26 Europe found that 82% rate their 2026 cyberattack concern as very high or extreme, while 74% believe their own organization is likely or highly likely to face a major cyber event this year.

Black Book reports that European hospital cybersecurity buying has shifted sharply from breach prevention toward clinical continuity, including identity resilience, ransomware recovery, immutable backup, read-only clinical access, supplier-risk management, zero-trust segmentation, and downtime simulation.

"Europe's hospitals are operating in one of the most complex cyber-risk environments in the world: nationally connected health systems, public-sector capacity pressure, cross-border supplier ecosystems, aging infrastructure, accelerated cloud migration, strict regulatory accountability, and clinical operations that cannot go offline," said Doug Brown, Founder of Black Book Research. "Attackers know the pressure points. They are not only targeting data; they are targeting authentication, availability, recovery windows, third-party dependencies, and the fragile digital workflows that move patients through emergency departments, labs, imaging, pharmacy, theatres, ICUs, and discharge. In Europe, the cyber battleground has moved from the server room to the bedside."

According to the survey, 86% of respondents are using HIMSS26 Europe to identify or compare cybersecurity options, and 63% report an active funded RFP, shortlist, vendor bake-off, or approved 2026 cybersecurity buying path.

The highest-demand cybersecurity categories include:

• Identity, IAM, PAM, SSO failover, and break-glass access: 64%

• Managed detection and response / SOC modernization: 62%

• Ransomware recovery, immutable backup, and read-only clinical access: 57%

• Network segmentation, zero trust, and ZTNA: 51%

• Incident-response retainers and crisis-response services: 46%

• Third-party supplier and vendor cyber-risk management: 45%

• Medical device / IoMT security: 37%

• Cyber range, downtime simulation, and resilience exercise services: 29%

Black Book's survey also found a pronounced operational resilience gap. While 59% of respondents expressed confidence their hospitals could operate safely for 24 hours without core EHR access, confidence fell to 32% at 48 hours and only 14% at 72 hours.

"The 72-hour number should disturb every hospital board and ministry-level health technology leader in Europe," Brown added. "A hospital that can improvise through the first day of downtime is not necessarily resilient. By day two and day three, medication reconciliation, laboratory turnaround, radiology workflow, identity access, pharmacy verification, transfer coordination, discharge planning, and backlog reconciliation become patient-safety risks. Cyber resilience is now an operational medicine issue."

Black Book's Cyber Resilience Continuity Index scored the overall European hospital respondent group at 44 out of 100, indicating that hospital cybersecurity urgency is outpacing validated clinical-continuity capability.

Additional findings from the survey include:

• 78% said their board receives general cybersecurity risk updates.

• 31% said their board receives cyber-resilience metrics tied to clinical continuity.

• 25% said critical suppliers have been fully tiered by clinical impact and incident-response obligation.

• 26% reported a full clinical downtime simulation within the past 12 months.

• 32% said their organization had never conducted a full clinical downtime simulation, had only completed tabletop activity, or did not know when the last exercise occurred.

Black Book concludes that the European hospital cybersecurity market is entering a new maturity stage. Cyber vendors heading into Copenhagen will be judged less on generic detection claims and more on proof that their technologies can protect care continuity under real-world outage conditions.

"European buyers are becoming more technically specific and less tolerant of cyber theater," Brown said. "They want evidence of segmented recovery, immutable backup integrity, privileged-access containment, identity failover, lateral-movement resistance, IoMT visibility, supplier breach escalation, and board-level resilience metrics. The vendor message that wins at HIMSS26 Europe will not be ‘we reduce cyber risk.' It will be ‘we help keep hospitals clinically operational when attackers succeed.'"

Black Book recommends that European hospital buyers require cybersecurity suppliers to demonstrate measurable support for 24/48/72-hour clinical continuity, including EHR downtime workflows, identity break-glass access, ransomware recovery, lab and pharmacy continuity, supplier escalation, read-only clinical data access, and post-outage reconciliation.

Source Study: Black Book Research, Pre-HIMSS26 Europe Copenhagen Cybersecurity Demand Pulse Survey, May 2026

About Black Book Research
Black Book Research provides independent global healthcare technology, managed services, cybersecurity, analytics, outsourcing, and digital transformation research based on user experience, buyer demand, operational performance, and market intelligence surveys across 140 international healthcare markets.

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Black Book Research, Tampa FL/ London UK

SOURCE: Black Book Research