FORT LAUDERDALE, FL - MARCH 07: Lt. Mike Baute from Florida's Child Predator CyberCrime Unit talks with a man on instant messenger during the unveiling of a new CyberCrimes office March 7, 2008 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The person on the other side of the chat told Lt. Baute, who is saying he is a 14-year-old girl, that he is a 31-year-old male and sent him a photograph of himself. According to current statistics, more than 77 million children regularly use the Internet. The Federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force says Florida ranks fourth in the nation in volume of child pornography. Nationally, one in seven children between the ages of 10 and 17 have been solicited online by a sexual predator. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) A new study finds that information stored and emails sent from within the health care industry have the worst security practices (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) — A new study finds that information stored and emails sent from within the health care industry have the worst security practices, with such emails being four times as likely to be fraudulent than those from social media outlets such as Facebook.

Health care “trust” ratings scored last among 11 industries surveyed for defense against cyberattacks. The 2014 edition of cybersecurity company Agari’s “State of Email Trust” report analyzed email authentication practices for 147 companies and a major spike was seen in industries across the board, but health providers were the most exposed.

Nearly 30 percent of health care companies surveyed received a “TrustScore” of zero in the Agari study, with banking institutions following right behind.

“We saw a record number of U.S. data breaches in 2014 and cyberattacks are a steady drumbeat of increasing breadth and severity, with the F.B.I. now ranking cybercrime as one of its top law enforcement activities,” said Patrick Peterson, founder and chief executive officer of Agari.

“For all its ubiquity and convenience, email remains the single most effective and widely used vector of attack. Our State of Email Trust report shows that companies are starting to take email security more seriously, but there’s still a long, long way to go. One step in the right direction is President Obama’s recent proposed initiatives around data sharing that are critical to securing our ever-growing digital economy.”

The number of U.S. data breaches tracked in 2014 surged 28 percent to 783 from the number reported in 2013, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. The number of U.S. data breach incidents tracked since 2005 hit a record of 5,029 in 2014, which involved in excess of 675 million estimated records.

The Agari report analyzed 6.5 billion emails each day for 2014 and found that health care provider emails are 4 times more likely to be fraudulent than emails coming from a social media website.

Agari’s Peterson tells Forbes that health care companies are at a greater risk because they’re not “programmed” to defend against such cyberattacks.

“It’s just not how these companies were built and programmed. It’s not their culture and the world they live in,” says Peterson. “What they’re really charged with is keeping us healthy and happy, and dealing with really traumatic things…This is a completely different challenge for them.”

This comes as Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurer, was the victim of a “very sophisticated” cyberattack that compromised credit card and personal medical information in a database exposing about 80 million people.

An Anthem spokeswoman said the insurer, which covers more than 37 million people, is working with federal investigators to figure out who was behind the attack. The hackers gained access to names, birthdates, email address, employment details, Social Security numbers, street addresses, and incomes of people currently covered by the company or who had coverage at some point in the past.

“I’m looking at this report side by side with the Anthem breach,” said Peterson. “And what do you know? Email was used to get in, and they sent emails to all the Anthem users.”

Cybersecurity experts say that as retailers like Target and Home Depot beef up their security health information has become a bigger target for hackers.

“To me, this is the next wave of where were going to see more and more attacks,” Mark Bower, a vice president with the cybersecurity firm Voltage Security, tells The Associated Press. “Cybercrime is a business. The attackers will simply move to the next low-hanging fruit.”