Cyberattacks against healthcare third-party vendors and business associates more than doubled in the first half of 2026, according to a single Dark Reading report, while direct attacks on hospitals grew only modestly. Threat actors appear to be deliberately targeting the supply chain perimeter, billing processors, managed IT providers, and administrative vendors, where access controls and file permission hygiene are historically weaker, enabling broad downstream impact across multiple covered entities from a single compromise. The trend, if corroborated, signals a strategic adversary shift that renders hospital-centric security investment insufficient without equivalent scrutiny of every vendor granted access to patient data and clinical systems.