The breach leaves the headlines in weeks — the remediation work runs for months
By Chris Beckage, Procom Technology Solutions
BOTTOM LINE
A common failure point is ownership after the initial response. Once the incident is contained, the remediation program still needs an owner senior enough to make decisions and keep it moving.
What the headlines never cover
A healthcare data breach gets a news cycle. Maybe a week, maybe two, depending on how many records and how bad the details are. As of June 2026, 772 large healthcare data breaches for 2025 were listed on HHS OCR’s breach portal, according to HIPAA Journal’s analysis of the portal data. That would put 2025 above the prior portal-report high of 746 in 2023. (Source: HIPAA Journal analysis of HHS OCR breach portal data, June 2026.) Each one gets its moment of coverage. Then it moves on. What almost never makes the news is the part that determines whether an organization comes out of it stronger or just quieter: the months of remediation work that start right after the headline fades
The work that starts after the response
The initial response — containment, notification, the legal and PR machinery — happens fast, because it must. This is not the incident-response work of containment, forensics, legal notification, or PR. It is the delivery work that follows: the specialist capacity required to close gaps, rebuild controls, and keep remediation moving. What follows is slower and far less visible: rebuilding identity and access controls, reviewing every third-party connection that touched the exposed data, closing the gaps that let the incident happen in the first place, and doing all of it while running the organization normally at the same time. That work can run for months, and in complex environments it may continue for much longer.
Where remediation stalls: ownership
A common failure point is ownership after the initial response. Once the incident is contained, the remediation program still needs an owner senior enough to make decisions and keep it moving — not just someone tracking it as one more item on an already full plate.
The hidden gap is capacity, not awareness
The hidden gap is rarely awareness. Most organizations know remediation matters. The gap is having the right people available at the right time: identity and access specialists, cloud security expertise, third-party risk support, project leadership, and enough delivery capacity to move remediation without pulling the whole technology team away from daily operations.
Who owns the next several months?
If an organization has been through an incident in the last year, the honest question isn’t “did we respond well.” It’s “who owns the next several months of work this created, and do they have the authority and the capacity to actually finish it.”
QUESTIONS TO TAKE BACK TO YOUR TEAM
After incident response, confirm:
- Who owns the remediation work after the incident response ends?
- Which specialist roles are needed for the next 90 to 180 days?
- What work is currently being absorbed by people who already have full-time operational responsibilities?
Next steps
Procom Consulting Services works with healthcare technology leaders to work out what kind of gap they are facing, then matches the right approach: a specialist, a team of specialists or a defined project.
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About the author
Chris Beckage, Vice President, Consulting Services
With over 25 years in the staffing industry, Chris drives Procom’s Consulting Services efforts to expand market opportunities and partnerships across North America.
