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Background: The implementation of emerging technologies has resulted in an increase of data breaches in healthcare organisations, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health information and cybersecurity managers need to understand if, and to what extent, breach types and locations are associated with their organisation's business type., Objective: To investigate if breach type and breach location are associated with business type, and if so, investigate how these factors affect information systems and protected health information in for-profit versus non-profit organisations., Method: The quantitative study was performed using chi-square tests for association and post-hoc comparison of column proportions analysis on an archival data set of reported healthcare data breaches from 2020 to 2022. Data from the Department of Health and Human Services website was retrieved and each organisation classified as for-profit or non-profit., Results: For-profit organisations experienced a significantly higher number of breaches due to theft, and non-profit organisations experienced a significantly higher number of breaches due to unauthorised access. Furthermore, the number of breaches that occurred on laptops and paper/films was significantly higher in for-profit organisations., Conclusion: While the threat level of hacking techniques is the same in for-profit and non-profit organisations, certain breach types are more likely to occur within specific breach locations based on the organisation's business type. To protect the privacy and security of medical information, health information and cybersecurity managers need to align with industry-leading frameworks and controls to prevent specific breach types that occur in specific locations within their environments., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Although chatbots are used a lot for customer relationship management (CRM), there needs to be more data security and privacy control strategies in chatbots, which has become a security concern for financial services institutions. Chatbots gain access to large amounts of vital company information and clients' personal information, which makes them a target of security attacks. The loss of data stored in chatbots can cause major harm to companies and customers. In this study, STRIDE (viz. Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information disclosure, Denial of service, Elevation of privilege) modelling was applied to identify the data security vulnerabilities and threats that pertain to chatbots used in the insurance industry. To do this, we conducted a case study of a South African insurance organisation. The adopted methodology involved data collection from stakeholders in the insurance organisation to identify chatbot use cases and understand chatbot operations. After that, we conducted a STRIDE-based analysis of the chatbot use cases to elicit security threats and vulnerabilities in the insurance chatbots in the organisation. The results reveal that security vulnerabilities associated with Spoofing, Denial of Service, and Elevation of privilege are more relevant to insurance chatbots. The most security threats stem from Tampering, Elevation of privilege, and Spoofing. The study extends the discussion on chatbot security. It fosters an understanding of security threats and vulnerabilities that pertain to insurance chatbots, which is beneficial for security researchers and practitioners working on the security of chatbots and the insurance industry., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This paper explores the security, privacy, and ethical implications of e-health data in Iran's healthcare network. A framework is proposed to ensure security and privacy in electronic health information processing across various institutions. The framework addresses aspects such as software/hardware, communication networks, patient safety, privacy, confidentiality, online health service regulations, commercial and judicial exploitation, and education/research. The study categorizes these requirements into seven main categories to safeguard health-oriented service recipients' security and privacy.

Background: Telehealth and mHealth apps become increasingly popular in health professions such as physiotherapy calling for increased awareness on functionality, privacy, and data security., Objectives: This work presents a functionality, privacy, and data-security evaluation of four telehealth services commonly used in physiotherapy., Methods: We examined functionality and features, data protection, privacy implementations and data-security with a questionnaire and performed an in-depth investigation of the services., Results: Privacy and security relevant findings such as use of outdated webservers, problems with certificate renewal as well as questionable GDPR compliance were reported., Conclusion: Due to the privacy and security relevant findings in this analysis it can be concluded that there is a need for improvement in design, development, operation as well as regulation of telehealth apps and services.

Background: In the Healthcare (HC) sector, the usage of Wireless Sensor Healthcare Networks (WSHN) is attaining specific importance. The sensor device is implanted into the patient's body, and the sensed health information of patients is transformed via data aggregating devices like mobile devices, cameras, and so on, to the doctors. Thus, the early signs of diseases are identified, and remote monitoring of the patient's health is carried out by the physician on time. This aids in improving the health condition of the people and reduces the severity of disorders. But, the security gap in HC remains unresolved, despite various advantages., Objective: This work proposes secured data communication in WSHN using Exponential Message Digest5 (EXP-MD5) and Diffie Hellman Secret Key-based Elliptic Curve Cryptography (DHSK-ECC) techniques., Methods: Primarily, the patient registers their details in the Hospital Cloud Server (HCS). With hospital ID and patient ID, public and private keys are generated during registration. Afterward, by utilizing the Navie Shuffling (NS) technique, nCr combinations are created and shuffled. After shuffling, any of the randomly selected combinations are encoded utilizing the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) code. For patient authentication, the ASCII code is further converted into a Quick Response(QR) code. Upon successful registration, the patient logs in to HCS. The patient can book for doctor's appointment if the login details are verified with those of the registered details. On consulting the doctor at the pre-informed time, the digital signature is created utilizing the Universal Unique Salt-based Digital Signature Algorithm (UUS-DSA) for authenticating the patient details. Further, for providing accessibility to all the authorized patients, the registered patients on HCS are considered as nodes. Then, an authorized path is created using the EXP-MD5 technique to protect each individual patient's details. The patient's IoT data is sensed, followed by authorized path creation. The data is encrypted via the DHSK-ECC algorithm for secure data transmission. Lastly, all the information is stored in HCS, so that the patient's health condition is regularly monitored by the doctor and the needy advice is suggested to the patients in the future. Also, hash matching is carried out when the doctor needs to access data., Results: The proposed technique's efficacy is validated by the performance analysis in comparison with other conventional techniques., Conclusion: In this proposed research, the authentication is performed in multiple scenarios to enhance data security and user privacy. The patient details are authenticated during registration and verification to access the online consultation only by the authorized person. Further, the patient health information is encrypted in the proposed work after consultation so that the intrusion of medical records by malicious users and data tampering is prevented. Also, the sensed data gathered from patients are transferred to the HCS by creating the authorized path, which further enhances the security of patient data. Thus, the data communication of the WSHN is well-secured in this work through multi-level authentication and improved cryptography techniques.

Genomics has significantly impacted the field of medicine, with advances in DNA sequencing leading to personalized medicine and a deeper understanding of the genomic basis of various diseases. The ability to share genomic data is crucial for advancing this field and developing new approaches to understanding the genome. However, the sensitive nature of this data requires secure methods for protecting it during storage and transfer. In this paper, we present a new tool for the secure encryption and decryption of FASTA files without sharing a common secret and with a reduced number of shared keys between the pairs. Our proposal combines symmetric and asymmetric encryption techniques, including the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) cypher and RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman). The tool is fast, reliable, and secure, outperforming existing tools in terms of security and ease of use. This makes it a valuable solution for the secure sharing and use of sensitive genomic data, representing a significant advancement in the field of genomics.

Background: The development of Precision Medicine strategies requires high-dimensional phenotypic and genomic data, both of which are highly privacy-sensitive data types. Conventional data management systems lack the capabilities to sufficiently handle the expected large quantities of such sensitive data in a secure manner. PROMISE is a genetic data management concept that implements a highly secure platform for data exchange while preserving patient interests, privacy, and autonomy., Methods: The concept of PROMISE to democratize genetic data was developed by an interdisciplinary team. It integrates a sophisticated cryptographic concept that allows only the patient to grant selective access to defined parts of his genetic information with single DNA base-pair resolution cryptography. The PROMISE system was developed for research purposes to evaluate the concept in a pilot study with nineteen cardiomyopathy patients undergoing genotyping, questionnaires, and longitudinal follow-up., Results: The safety of genetic data was very important to 79%, and patients generally regarded the data as highly sensitive. More than half the patients reported that their attitude towards the handling of genetic data has changed after using the PROMISE app for 4 months (median). The patients reported higher confidence in data security and willingness to share their data with commercial third parties, including pharmaceutical companies (increase from 5 to 32%)., Conclusion: PROMISE democratizes genomic data by a transparent, secure, and patient-centric approach. This clinical pilot study evaluating a genetic data infrastructure is unique and shows that patient's acceptance of data sharing can be increased by patient-centric decision-making., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Especially in biomedical research, individual-level data must be protected due to the sensitivity of the data that is associated with patients. The broad goal of scientific data re-use is to allow many researchers to derive new hypotheses and insights from the data while preserving privacy. Data usage control (DUC) as an attribute-based access mechanism promises to overcome the limitations of traditional access control models achieving that goal. Park and Sandhu provided the usage control (UCON) model as an instance of DUC, which defines policies that evaluate certain attributes. Here, we present an UCON-based architecture, which is augmented with risk-based anonymization as provided by the R package sdcMicro and an extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) environment with a core policy decision point as implemented by authzforce.

Introduction: Medical photography, ubiquitous in plastic surgery, provides essential information to the medical record. Smartphones have become the preferred tool for acquiring these photographs, but cause a data security issue. Furthermore, the management of photographs is frequently manual and time-consuming. The Pixacare software suite has been designed to meet this need in complete security. It includes a mobile application, a web application and a HADS server. The objective of the study was to calculate the time saved by the Pixacare application at the time of data acquisition., Patients and Methods: This prospective and monocentric study was carried out in two steps in order to time the acquisition times with the usual method and with the Pixacare mobile application. Each phase included 89 patients recruited in plastic and maxillofacial surgery consultation with four surgeons. The number of patients and the average number of photographs per patient were comparable for each practitioner in both phases., Results: The acquisition time of the photographic data was divided by 3.77 (P<0.001). With the usual method, the average acquisition time was 259seconds, compared to 69seconds with the Pixacare application, saving 3minutes and 10seconds per patient., Conclusion: The Pixacare software suite saves the surgeon significant time while ensuring appropriate data security. This study does not take into account the additional time saved by organising medical meetings, the benefits of sharing photographs between healthcare professionals and the efficiency of secure messaging., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

There is a demand for a pseudonymization service by a Trusted Third Party (TTP), that features clientside pseudonymization. We propose a system using modern web technology, which requires no installation but can handle data preprocessing and pseudonymization safely on the client.

Remote monitoring of cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) has become routine practice as a result of the advances in biomedical engineering, the advent of interconnectivity between the devices through the Internet, and the demonstrated improvement in patient outcomes, survival, and hospitalizations. However, this increased dependency on the Internet of Things comes with risks in the form of cybersecurity lapses and possible attacks. Although no cyberattack leading to patient harm has been reported to date, the threat is real and has been demonstrated in research laboratory scenarios and echoed in patient concerns. The CIED universe comprises a complex interplay of devices, connectivity protocols, and sensitive information flow between the devices and the central cloud server. Various manufacturers use proprietary software and black-box connectivity protocols that are susceptible to hacking. Here we discuss the fundamentals of the CIED ecosystem, the potential security vulnerabilities, a historical overview of such vulnerabilities reported in the literature, and recommendations for improving the security of the CIED ecosystem and patient safety., (Copyright © 2020 Heart Rhythm Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Medical confidentiality is an essential duty in the medical profession. In this paper, we introduce a novel robust blind watermarking method for securing the medical report in a DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) imaging. The insertion of each bit is done in the subtraction of adjacent DC coefficients of the FFT (fast Fourier transformation) using a key k w . Each bit of the watermark is eXORed with a bit generated by a proposed system which generates a bit sequence in function of the key k w . The proposed method has the features of having better security, invisibility, and robustness. Experimental results show that it is robust to single, double, and triple attacks and that it has better robustness than recently proposed watermarking schemes. Graphical abstract The proposed security system.

Background: Data security issues still constitute the main reason for the sluggish dissemination of electronic health records (EHRs). Given that blockchain technology offers the possibility to verify transactions through a decentralized network, it may serve as a solution to secure health-related data. Therefore, we have identified stakeholder-specific requirements and propose a blockchain-based architecture for EHRs, while referring to the already existing scientific discussions on the potential of blockchain for use in EHRs., Objective: This study aimed to introduce blockchain technology for EHRs, based on identifying stakeholders and systematically eliciting their requirements, and to discuss the key benefits (KBs) and key challenges (KCs) of blockchain technology in the context of EHRs., Methods: The blockchain-based architecture was developed in the framework of the design science research paradigm. The requirements were identified using a structured literature review and interviews with nine health care experts. Subsequently, the proposed architecture was evaluated using 4 workshops with 15 participants., Results: We identified three major EHR stakeholder groups and 34 respective requirements. On this basis, we developed a five-layer architecture. The subsequent evaluation of the artifact was followed by the discussion of 12 KBs and 12 KCs of a blockchain-based architecture for EHRs. To address the KCs, we derived five recommendations for action for science and practice., Conclusions: Our findings indicate that blockchain technology offers considerable potential to advance EHRs. Improvements to currently available EHR solutions are expected, for instance, in the areas of data security, traceability, and automation by smart contracts. Future research could examine the patient's acceptance of blockchain-based EHRs and cost-benefit analyses., (©Jan Heinrich Beinke, Christian Fitte, Frank Teuteberg. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 07.10.2019.)

Background: The rapid development of genetic and genomic technologies, such as next-generation sequencing and genome editing, has made disease treatment much more precise and effective. The technologies' value can only be realized by the aggregation and analysis of people's genomic and health data. However, the collection and sharing of genomic data has many obstacles, including low data quality, information islands, tampering distortions, missing records, leaking of private data, and gray data transactions., Objective: This study aimed to prove that emerging blockchain technology provides a solution for the protection and management of sensitive personal genomic data because of its decentralization, traceability, encryption algorithms, and antitampering features., Methods: This paper describes the case of a blockchain-based genomic big data platform, LifeCODE.ai, to illustrate the means by which blockchain enables the storage and management of genomic data from the perspectives of data ownership, data sharing, and data security., Results: Blockchain opens up new avenues for dealing with data ownership, data sharing, and data security issues in genomic big data platforms and realizes the psychological empowerment of individuals in the platform., Conclusions: The blockchain platform provides new possibilities for the management and security of genetic data and can help realize the psychological empowerment of individuals in the process, and consequently, the effects of data self-governance, incentive-sharing, and security improvement can be achieved. However, there are still some problems in the blockchain that have not been solved, and which require continuous in-depth research and innovation in the future., (©Xiao-Ling Jin, Miao Zhang, Zhongyun Zhou, Xiaoyu Yu. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 10.09.2019.)

Because extensive data from medical records are gathered by organ procurement teams, the process of data transfer between sites created a data security risk. This includes the use of fax machines, courier services, and employees' vehicles. Even health records transmitted over public Wi-Fi become at risk for a data breach. The Plan-Do-Study-Act method for performance improvement was used to address this time-consuming and labor-intensive process. A secured virtual private network from within the donor hospital site setting was developed to improve the transfer of images and data. The goal was to improve the process and increase data security. Once the new network was in place, the process steps decreased and eliminated data vulnerability. Average process time decreased by approximately 1 hour. Organs procured increased from pre (expected 3, observed 2) to post (expected 3, observed 5) implementation of the new process.

Big Data and cloud computing are two essential issues in the recent years, empowers computing resources to be given as Information Technology services with high efficiency and effectiveness. So as to protect the security of data holders, data are regularly stored in the cloud in an encrypted form. In any case, encrypted data introduce new challenges for cloud data deduplication, which becomes crucial for big data storage and processing in the cloud along with access control. In this paper dissected the medical big data security utilizing encryption with access control process. Big database reduce process Map-Reduce framework with Optimal Fuzzy C means (OFCM) to Clustered data are accumulated in the cloud and furthermore using classification approach to classify sensitive and non-sensitive data in the cloud to encryption. This security process Triple DES (TDES) to encrypted and stored in the cloud and propose practical optimization techniques that further enhance the scheme's performance, at long last authentication phase with attribute-based access control is used to authenticate data in cloud sim. From the proposed method the clustering, classification and encryption results are compared to existing approaches.

School nurses collect, manage, and report on school health data, which is covered by student privacy laws. School nurses and other district employees who collect and manage sensitive data must understand their responsibilities throughout the data life cycle. Nurses must identify who is accountable for data governance in their school and the process for influencing data governance policies and procedures. Every school district is accountable for the integrity and the security of the data it collects about students, families, and staff. Data governance encompasses all decisions about data throughout the data life cycle from defining what data are needed, to collecting, storing, protecting, using, sharing, and retiring and destroying data and who is accountable for those decisions. The data governance in schools is prescribed by the U.S. Department of Education, state education departments, and local school districts. The Student Privacy Policy Office at the U.S. Department of Education publishes clear and precise guidance on the treatment of data collected in schools.

The lawfulness of telemedical applications themselves is beyond question from the point of view of data protection. However demands have to be met in two respects to make the procedures legitimate: On the one hand, the informed consent of the participating patients is necessary, on which high demands have to be made. On the other hand, a high level of data security has to be ensured, especially if providers who are not professionals subject to professional secrecy partake in the application.

Background: A clinical data management system is a software supporting the data management process in clinical trials. In this system, the effective support of clinical data management dimensions leads to the increased accuracy of results and prevention of diversion in clinical trials. The aim of this review article was to investigate the dimensions of data management in clinical data management systems., Methods: This study was conducted in 2017. The used databases included Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, ProQuest, Ovid Medline and PubMed. The search was conducted over a period of 10 years from 2007 to 2017. The initial number of studies was 101 reaching 19 in the final stage. The final studies were described and compared in terms of the year, country and dimensions of the clinical data management process in clinical trials., Results: The research findings indicated that none of the systems completely supported the data management dimensions in clinical trials. Although these systems were developed for supporting the clinical data management process, they were similar to electronic data capture systems in many cases. The most significant dimensions of data management in such systems were data collection or entry, report, validation, and security maintenance., Conclusion: Seemingly, not sufficient attention has been paid to automate all dimensions of the clinical data management process in clinical trials. However, these systems could take positive steps towards changing the manual processes of clinical data management to electronic processes., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)

Background: Health information systems are innovative products designed to improve the delivery of effective healthcare, but they are also vulnerable to breaches of information security, including unauthorised access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification or destruction, and duplication of passwords. Greater openness and multi-connectedness between heterogeneous stakeholders within health networks increase the security risk., Objective: The focus of this research was on the indirect effects of management support (MS) on user compliance behaviour (UCB) towards information security policies (ISPs) among health professionals in selected Malaysian public hospitals. The aim was to identify significant factors and provide a clearer understanding of the nature of compliance behaviour in the health sector environment., Method: Using a survey design and stratified random sampling method, self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 454 healthcare professionals in three hospitals. Drawing on theories of planned behaviour, perceived behavioural control (self-efficacy (SE) and MS components) and the trust factor, an information system security policies compliance model was developed to test three related constructs (MS, SE and perceived trust (PT)) and their relationship to UCB towards ISPs., Results: Results showed a 52.8% variation in UCB through significant factors. Partial least squares structural equation modelling demonstrated that all factors were significant and that MS had an indirect effect on UCB through both PT and SE among respondents to this study., Conclusion: The research model based on the theory of planned behaviour in combination with other human and organisational factors has made a useful contribution towards explaining compliance behaviour in relation to organisational ISPs, with trust being the most significant factor. In adopting a multidimensional approach to management-user interactions via multidisciplinary concepts and theories to evaluate the association between the integrated management-user values and the nature of compliance towards ISPs among selected health professionals, this study has made a unique contribution to the literature.

There is a growing body of evidence highlighting the benefits of mobile health in terms of cost effectiveness, efficiency and patient satisfaction. These benefits have been further enhanced through the development of Instant Messaging (IM) applications (apps) that enable the transmission of images and text messages. The aim of this paper is to review the use of IM in clinical services, and to understand the medico legal concerns with regard to the security and management of protected health information on doctors' phones., Method: PubMed was searched using the various IM apps as a search term. Inclusion criteria were that the paper was in English and described the use of IM in a clinical service., Results: 39 papers met the inclusion criteria. Data are at risk at several levels, including during transmission, storage on servers en route, and on the sender's and receiver's phones. Consent is seldom obtained for instant messaging, and confidentiality, privacy, data security and record keeping remain areas of concern., Conclusion: The use of IM, and in particular WhatsApp, is now commonplace amongst clinicians and used extensively across different clinical services. Security concerns have created barriers preventing the global adoption of IM in healthcare. Guidelines in the management and use of IM need to be developed in order to prevent the unwanted consequences of non-compliance by uninformed clinicians. With improved security, IM has proven to be a viable option in the developing world.

Use of shared electronic health records opens a whole range of new possibilities for flexible and fruitful cooperation among health personnel in different health institutions, to the benefit of the patients. There are, however, unsolved legal and security challenges. The overall aim of this article is to highlight legal and security challenges that should be considered before using shared electronic cooperation platforms and health record systems to avoid legal and security "surprises" subsequent to the implementation. Practical lessons learned from the use of a web-based ulcer record system involving patients, community nurses, GPs, and hospital nurses and doctors in specialist health care are used to illustrate challenges we faced. Discussion of possible legal and security challenges is critical for successful implementation of shared electronic collaboration systems. Key challenges include (1) allocation of responsibility, (2) documentation routines, (3) and integrated or federated access control. We discuss and suggest how challenges of legal and security aspects can be handled. This discussion may be useful for both current and future users, as well as policy makers.

Being able to track, analyze, and use data from continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) and through platforms and apps that communicate with CGMs helps achieve better outcomes and can advance the understanding of diabetes. The risks to patients' expectation of privacy are great, and their ability to control how their information is collected, stored, and used is virtually nonexistent. Patients' physical security is also at risk if adequate cybersecurity measures are not taken. Currently, data privacy and security protections are not robust enough to address the privacy and security risks and stymies the current and future benefits of CGM and the platforms and apps that communicate with them.

The responsibility that physicians have to protect their patients from harm extends to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of patient health information including that contained within radiological images. The intent of HIPAA and subsequent HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules is to keep patients' private information confidential while allowing providers access to and maintaining the integrity of relevant information needed to provide care. Failure to comply with electronic protected health information (ePHI) regulations could result in financial or criminal penalties or both. Protected health information refers to anything that can reasonably be used to identify a patient (eg, name, age, date of birth, social security number, radiology examination accession number). The basic tools and techniques used to maintain medical information security and patient privacy described in this article include physical safeguards such as computer device isolation and data backup, technical safeguards such as firewalls and secure transmission modes, and administrative safeguards including documentation of security policies, training of staff, and audit tracking through system logs. Other important concepts related to privacy and security are explained, including user authentication, authorization, availability, confidentiality, data integrity, and nonrepudiation. Patient privacy and security of medical information are critical elements in today's electronic health care environment. Radiology has led the way in adopting digital systems to make possible the availability of medical information anywhere anytime, and in identifying and working to eliminate any risks to patients., (Copyright © 2014 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The sharing and storage of scientific knowledge, information and data are today mainly in digitized form, which will become the predominant means of communicating scientific work in the future. One of the best-established formats is the open standard of PDF (Portable Document Format), which is renowned for its flexibility and stability. In this article, we expose a major flaw in the format with respect to the security of confidential information, such that even organizations responsible for safeguarding and setting the standards for data management were unintentionally revealing confidential patient data. By collecting and analysing a random sample of files from a health informatics organization, we demonstrate the extent of the problem and determine its cause by code analysis of an example. In conclusion, we suggest the development of a knowledge-sharing format that does not demand expert skills for safe usage: WYSIWYS (What You See Is What You Store)., (© The Author(s) 2011.)

With the progress of science and the development of human society, the demand for complex software and hardware systems has sharply increased. Its development speed far exceeds the ability to design, implement, test, and maintain software and hardware. This article mainly studied the computer system reliability and data security of GPN networks. The automatic testing module of the program called the program to be tested into the simulator, started these test cases, and automatically simulated the situations in the test cases for testing. The test results were automatically saved to the reliability test case result document, and the database was encrypted using a GPN network. In password processing, a random key was generated and encrypted with a public key associated with a specific user identification code. Finally, the key was attached to the specified database. During the testing process, the average clock period of multiple experiments was used. The CPU (Central Processing Unit) time estimated the number of clock cycles required by the processor to execute tasks without considering factors such as pipeline. After introducing the GPN network in this article, the system throughput was 175 mpbs. Therefore, GPN networks had a certain positive impact on the reliability of computer systems and data security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security adversaries are rampant on the Internet, constantly seeking vulnerabilities to exploit. The sheer proliferation of these sophisticated threats necessitates innovative and swift defensive measures to protect the vulnerable infrastructure. Tools such as honeypots effectively determine adversary behavior and safeguard critical organizational systems. However, it takes a significant amount of time to analyze these attacks on the honeypots, and by the time actionable intelligence is gathered from the attacker's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), it is often too late to prevent potential damage to the organization's critical systems. This paper contributes to the advancement of cybersecurity practices by presenting a cutting-edge methodology, capitalizing on the synergy between artificial intelligence and threat analysis to combat evolving cyber threats. The current research articulates a novel strategy, outlining a method to analyze large volumes of attacker data from honeypots utilizing large language models (LLMs) to assimilate TTPs and apply this knowledge to identify real-time anomalies in regular user activity. The effectiveness of this model is tested in real-world scenarios, demonstrating a notable reduction in response time for detecting malicious activities in critical infrastructure. Moreover, we delve into the proposed framework's practical implementation considerations and scalability, underscoring its adaptability in diverse organizational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ensuring the security of computer networks is of utmost importance, and intrusion detection plays a vital role in safeguarding these systems. Traditional intrusion detection systems (IDSs) often suffer from drawbacks like reliance on outdated rules and centralized architectures, limiting their performance in the face of evolving threats and large-scale data networks. To address these challenges, we present an advanced anomaly detection-based IDS that utilizes a decentralized communicative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). In our approach, multiple reinforcement learning agents collaborate in intrusion detection, effectively mitigating the non-stationarity problem and introducing a specialized secure communication method. We further enhance the learning process by incorporating external knowledge. Our approach is evaluated through extensive experiments conducted on the benchmark NSL Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining dataset. These experiments encompass diverse scenarios, involving varying numbers of agents to prove scalability feature. The results underscore the effectiveness of our method, which surpasses the performance of existing state-of-the-art solutions based on MARL, achieving a high accuracy rate of 97.80%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of cloud computing and the introduction of Web technologies and the significant development in the digital technologies led to the connectivity of states and nations (developed and developing countries) worldwide in which global network provide platform for the connection. Digital forensics is a field of computer security that uses software applications and standard guidelines which support the extraction of evidences from any computer appliances which are perfectly enough for the court of law to use and make a judgment based on the authenticity and objectivity of the information obtained. This work aims to study the importance of digital forensics in cyber security and its impact on developing countries and shows the tremendous growth of cyber threats and attacks in them. A systematic survey method was used for research papers in this field. As a consequence, researchers have called for the need to develop digital forensics skills in South Africa through university programs, have associated training courses, and evaluate the extent to which the current cyber security awareness initiatives address cyber security threats and risks. In most parts of the world today, especially in developing countries where computers and other digital devices are used daily on the Internet for excessive fraudulent activities, this will help eliminate and minimize computer-related crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent investigations emphasize the importance of cybersecurity in the growing digital era; 83% of organizations experienced breaks in cyber security in 2022, spending a mean of 4,35 million dollars per incident. Cybersecurity in Peru is regulated by legal norms aimed at protecting data and providing informatic security. Objective: To describe cybersecurity in the support services to occupational physicians (SSOP) in the city of Lima. Methods: A non-validated survey was created and distributed to 11 SSOPs in Lima that provide a service to an important building project in Lima. Results: More than 80% of health care establishments had a response plan against cybernetic attacks; security copies of the data were done regularly storing them in a different place than the establishment and regularly updated security software's. Conclusion: The cybersecurity program is reactive. We discuss the importance of cybersecurity and analyze future challenges as well as emphasize the importance of preemptive preparedness in an environment of constant digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing concern about IT security in the healthcare sector due to the number of cyberattacks. The objective of the review is to analyze the state of adoption of computer security in the healthcare sector and provide valuable knowledge to researchers and health organizations interested in this field of study. An exhaustive search of international and regional articles on computer security in healthcare organizations was conducted using Scopus, Dimensions, and pubMed databases. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) statement was used for the selection of articles published between 2018 and 2022. The final number of articles considered is 50. The review explored approaches related to computer security types, mechanisms, and technologies. The findings reveal that blockchain is the most widely used technology to protect medical information. In addition, network, software, and hardware security approaches are employed, using mechanisms such as data encryption, authentication, and access control. Based on these findings, a perimeter security model for the protection of medical information is proposed. In conclusion, these results highlight the importance of adopting robust security measures in terms of networks, software, and hardware, as well as adopting blockchain technology to improve data security in the healthcare sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different encryption algorithms such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Rivest, Shamir, Adleman (RSA) were proposed to protect the privacy of the data. However, most of these existing methods are vulnerable to a brute-force attack because the cipher text remains unintelligible until the original data is found. Consequently, this problem prompted researchers to introduce honey encryption (HE). HE helps to withstand the vulnerability of the encryption algorithms in brute force attacks making transmitted data more secure and efficient. Hence to reduce processing time we proposed a hybridized HE with Residue Number System. Traditional Moduli Set {2n-1, 2n, 2n+1} was used to generate the Key while Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT), and HE technique were used for decrypting the data, based on the Distribution Transformation Decoder. Thus, anytime an attacker tries to access the data, so long the length of the guessed key is the same as the original key, the HE algorithm will generate meaningful but fake data, this helps to deter an attacker from further threat. The result showed that the proposed system was able to withstand brute force attacks with less processing time compared to other systems. N-values for the moduli set used were varied against encryption and decryption time. Comparing the obtained results with the existing system, the proposed system processing time was faster and more secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security adversaries are always constantly looking for targets to exploit. The mechanism of exploitation used by security adversaries varies significantly. Many focus on easy compromises as mere pivots to extend their attacks from these exploited systems to continue accomplishing their original goals. The cloud environment is a highly susceptible target for adversaries and provides a solid mechanism for observing adversary behavior. The sheer volume of attacks on the cloud provides insights into the attacker's objectives and attack patterns, which can be leveraged for protecting infrastructure. This work deep dives into the practices used by adversaries on the commonly exposed protocols in the Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure (Azure), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) platforms. A robust honeypot model is documented that compares attacker behavior across various ports and protocols running in multiple cloud environments. This work illustrates that adversary activity is highly versatile in the public cloud environment, with an average of 700 new and unique IP addresses found attacking honeypot infrastructure daily. Further, this article illustrates the security safeguards a typical organization can leverage to mitigate the threats from these adversaries constantly probing insecure targets on the cloud platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research uniquely examines time perspective (TP) predictors of online security behaviour. Participants (N = 121) completed questionnaires assessing computer security use, security behaviour intentions, and time perspective. Stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed computer security use was positively by predicted by Future TP. Device Securement was positively predicted from Carpe Diem TP. Updating was positively predicted from a Carpe Diem TP and a Past Negative TP. Proactive Awareness was negatively predicted from Present Hedonism. As time perspective is malleable, an ability to switch effectively between the TPs may enhance aspects of online security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is facing threats in digital transformation. Cyber threats have become trending as reported by my countries. Developed countries like Britain, America, Europe and Japan already prepared countermeasures for various incidents on computer threats since Internet was introduced. They formulated and developed a successful model to produce computer security experts and highly skilled talent at various level diploma, bachelor and professional. University and College established academic program in computer and internet security at bachelor and postgraduate level. Industries at those countries introduced certification program in computer and internet security. Throughout our studies, limited initiatives related to talent development in combating computer security issues including cyber threats. Previous studies showed development of cybersecurity talent in Muslim countries is critical. Malaysia needs 20000 cybersecurity professionals in 2025 and only achieved 2500 at present. This study presents our experience in developing cybersecurity competencies and professional talent for OIC-Country. We collaborated virtually with OICCERT (OIC Centre for Emergency and Response Team) in knowledge exchange, proposed appropriate competency model and participate in professional certification development. We presented the eight years active involvement with OIC-CERT activities. All initiatives established by OIC-CERT have produced outstanding impact to OIC Countries. One of the impactful initiatives known Global Ace, is getting serious attention by many Muslim countries. We also get the benefit of other programs such as training for risks analysis, incident management and policy development. Our students be able to participate with virtual lecture on combating insider threats, cyber threats drill, and security audit. OIC-CERT also introduces the first Industry Journal in Cybersecurity known as OIC-CERT Journal of Cybersecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software security is an ongoing problem, largely due to a lack of security knowledge among software developers from diverse backgrounds. To counter this, security experts are attempting to offer a broad range of knowledge resources to enlighten developers about increasing cybersecurity threats. Unfortunately, the abundance of knowledge resources does not seem to have much of an impact on reducing the issue of software security. The ineffective teaching and learning approaches for software security have created difficulties for developers in learning security knowledge. This research employs a four-cycle of Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) to integrate necessary elements in the development of a context-based learning system for security education and learning. The final artifact is an ontology-based web application that facilitates a contextualized learning process by providing security knowledge through contextual software cases. Through evaluation in pedagogical and software development environments, it is proven to contribute a viable solution to the problem domain. While these results are positive, the innovative context-based artifact benefits not only the domain of software engineering but also other educational fields, such as information security and computer security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Storing and sharing health records through electronic systems pose security risks. To address them, several countries’ regulations have established that healthcare information systems must fulfill security properties (confidentiality, access control, integrity, revocation and anonymity) and complementary ones (emergency access and interoperability). Upon tackling these issues, several proposals present security limitations and/or address specific properties only. We propose Sec-Health, a blockchain-based protocol that secures health records, addressing all of the main security and complementary properties defined in current regulations. We show that Sec-Health is a suitable solution by analyzing it under several attack scenarios and describing how it overcomes the problems of existing solutions. Furthermore, we evaluate a Sec-Health Proof of Concept, showing that it can reduce from 26% up to 90% the time to access health records, and reduce up to 50% client-side memory overhead, compared to related work.

The theoretical and practical progress that has occurred in the field of computer networks during the past fifteen years has enhanced the economical efficiency and social relevance of related real-world use cases. Nevertheless, this ubiquitous usage has also introduced numerous security risks. Therefore, monitoring hardware and software resources represents one of the main instruments used in order to prevent potential attacks and to ensure the security and reliability of a network. Various solutions have been reported in the related scientific literature. In essence, most of the existing approaches are not suitable to implement a real-time hardware monitoring and management solution, particularly in heterogeneous networks. Therefore, the main contribution of this paper is represented by an architectural and implementational model, which is effective in order to build an interconnected system that can help system and network administrators to secure a network. This requirement is met by considering symmetrical design and implementation features related to various operating systems. Thus, the existing symmetrical relationships among identified parameters allow for the data to be wrapped into the same custom network packages, which are transported over the communication medium or are stored using the same data structures or tables. The system has been thoroughly assessed considering several real-world use case scenarios, and the results demonstrate that the proposed model can be applied to software-defined networks, which can be protected by relevant intrusion detection systems (IDS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the prehistory of 'cyber' and computer security in the United States, but we know less about other countries. This essay seeks to examine early British efforts in this field and especially attacks by 'Tiger Teams' against ICL mainframe computers that were being deployed by MI5 and other agencies. Over 2 years, a sophisticated programme was completed. It argues that a severe expertise shortage ensured a degree of convergence and later outsourcing to ICL. This pioneering work also paved the way for 'Project Spaceman' which offered government highly secure options together with encryption in the mid-1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Machine Learning, the datasets used to build models are one of the main factors limiting what these models can achieve and how good their predictive performance is. Machine Learning applications for cyber-security or computer security are numerous including cyber threat mitigation and security infrastructure enhancement through pattern recognition, real-time attack detection, and in-depth penetration testing. Therefore, for these applications in particular, the datasets used to build the models must be carefully thought to be representative of real-world data. However, because of the scarcity of labelled data and the cost of manually labelling positive examples, there is a growing corpus of literature utilizing Semi-Supervised Learning with cyber-security data repositories. In this work, we provide a comprehensive overview of publicly available data repositories and datasets used for building computer security or cyber-security systems based on Semi-Supervised Learning, where only a few labels are necessary or available for building strong models. We highlight the strengths and limitations of the data repositories and sets and provide an analysis of the performance assessment metrics used to evaluate the built models. Finally, we discuss open challenges and provide future research directions for using cyber-security datasets and evaluating models built upon them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile computing has emerged as a pervasive technology that empowers its users with portable computation and context-aware communication. Smart systems and infrastructures can exploit portable and context-aware computing technologies to provide any time, any place digitized services on the go. Despite the offered benefits, such as portability, context-sensitivity, and high connectivity, mobile computing also faces some critical challenges. These challenges include resource poverty as well as data security and privacy that need to be addressed to increase the pervasiveness of mobile systems. We propose to provide a self-protection mechanism for mobile devices against the unforeseen security threats that can attack the critical resources of mobile devices. We have unified the concepts of autonomic computing and computer security to develop a framework that enables adaptive security to dynamically configure the security measures of a mobile device. We have developed a framework - an android-based prototype - that supports automation and user decision to protect the critical hardware and software resources of a device. Evaluation results demonstrate (i) framework's accuracy for runtime detection and minimization of threats, and (ii) framework's efficiency for device's resource utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain technology must have sparked widespread interest, applications associated with data monitoring, banking sectors, computer security, the Internet of Things, and food chemistry to the healthcare sector and cognitive science. The use of multimedia in the healthcare architecture also allows for the storage, processing and transmission of patient information in a wide range of formats such as images, text and audio over the Internet using various smart particles. However, managing large amounts of data, including findings and images of each individual, increases human effort and increases protection risks. In this paper, to address these problems by using IoT in healthcare improves the performance of patient care while lowering costs by efficiently distributing healthcare resources. Nevertheless, various attackers can cause a variety of risks in IoT devices. To avoid these problems, Blockchain technology has been identified as the most effective method for maintaining the secrecy and security of control systems in real-time. This should provide a security architecture for healthcare multimedia content using blockchain technology by producing the hash of every information so that any transition or modification in information, as well as any breaches of medicines, would be evidenced across the whole blockchain platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of the work in the field of steganography is to transmit data in a cover image with minimal distortion. The proposed method aims to transmit periodically updated data in a highly secure manner through a low-distortion steganographic cover image. Storing these data directly in the cover image poses a major security risk. Therefore, the datas to be transmitted is not directly hidden in the cover image, but in the chaotic pattern image on the server side. In the cover images, the row and column address data of the logical fields of the chaotic pattern image are hidden. Thus, a small amount of data representing a large amount of data is sent to the receiver along with the cover object. Since the representative data is much smaller than the data to be transmitted, the distortion of the cover image is minimized. The method also includes reverse social engineering. In this application, attackers are misled to distinguish between the hidden data and the real data. PSNR metric is used to compare the method with other studies. Only the blue channel of the Baboon, Barbara and Lena cover images was loaded with data. In this case, the PSNR value in the red and green channels was infinite. The PSNR result in the blue channel is also higher than the methods used in other studies. The high results indicate that the distortion in the cover images is lower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's computerised world, cybersecurity attacks have become a major headache with detrimental effects on cultural institutions including libraries, archives, and museums around the world. The exponential growth in the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and advances in digitalisation have increased the complexity of cybersecurity attacks and threats. Archival repositories face greater exposure to cybersecurity threats and attacks due to increasing digitalisation. In South Africa, a growing number of cultural heritage institutions such as archival repositories and libraries are under constant attack by cybersecurity threats and attacks to disrupt systems, networks, and services offered to the citizens. Cybersecurity could serve as the wall keeping malicious actors from attacking these institutions. This qualitative study sought to explore cybersecurity of information systems at the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (NARSSA) in Pretoria. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews that were tape-recorded and analysed using a thematic analysis and NVivo 12 software package. The findings of this study revealed that the NARSSA is under severe attack from phishing attacks, computer viruses and worms, Trojan horses, password attacks, and Denial of Service attacks. The results further showed that Microsoft firewall, audit train, strong user password and anti-virus software were put in place to mitigate cybersecurity attacks and threats. The NARSSA should achieve a strong cyber resilience security posture to protect computer systems against cyber-attacks. It is concluded that the NARSSA needs to invest heavily in a security awareness program to continually train staff on how to identify and respond appropriately to the growing range of cyber security threats and defend against attacks such as phishing attacks, social engineering attacks, ransomware attacks, and malware attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the secrecy performance analysis of an amplify-and-forward relay-assisted cooperative communication system in the presence of a passive external eavesdropper. In contrast to existing works that assume high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) approximations, we have investigated exact and secrecy outage probabilities. Furthermore, we consider a more challenging scenario where the source may not be reachable to the intended user directly. But the eavesdropper can tap both the source link and the relay link. First of all, the outage probability is analyzed at the intended user as well as the eavesdropper. Next, defining the secrecy rate for the amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying system, the expression of the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the secrecy intercept probability (SIP) have been derived, respectively. Noticing the complexity involved in the integration of SOP and SIP expressions, the closed-form expressions have been derived for asymptotic cases. Finally, the exact and asymptotic analysis has been verified by performing Monte-Carlo simulations. It is observed that the relay position should be closer to the source compared to the eavesdropper to achieve improved SOP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyberspace has become one of the most preferred and popular carrier of information exchange these days. A substantial amount of research especially on quantum computers and security issues has been continuously going on. In this paper, our focus is on quantum cryptography. An in-depth security analysis of quantum key distribution (QKD has been provided here. Our approach not only promises long-term security to digital data but also simplifies data encryption method through QKD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]