This thesis considers the current requirements for security in European healthcare establishments. Information Technology is being used increasingly by all areas of healthcare, from administration to clinical treatment and this has resulted in increased dependence upon computer systems by healthcare staff. The thesis looks at healthcare security requirements from the European perspective. An aim of the research was to develop security guidelines that could be used by healthcare establishments to implement a common baseline standard for security. These guidelines represent work submitted to the Commission of European Communities SEISMED (Secure Environment for Information Systems in Medicine) project, with which the research programme was closely linked. The guidelines were validated by implementing them with the Plymouth and Torbay Health Trust. The thesis also describes the development of a new management methodology and this was developed to allow the smooth implementation of security within healthcare establishments. The methodology was validated by actually using it within the Plymouth and Torbay Health Authority to implement security countermeasures. A major area of the research was looking at the use of risk analysis and reviewing all the known risk analysis methodologies. The use of risk analysis within healthcare was also considered and the main risk analysis methods used by UK healthcare establishments were reviewed. The thesis explains why there is a need for a risk analysis method specially developed for healthcare. As part of the research a new risk analysis method was developed, this allows healthcare establishments to determine their own security requirements. The method was also combined with the new management methodology that would determine any implementional problems. The risk analysis methodology was developed into a computerised prototype, which demonstrated the different stages of the methodology.

<p>Social Engineering attacks have been a rising issue in recent years, affecting a multitude of industries. One industry that has been of great interest to hackers is the Healthcare industry due to the high value of patient information. Social Engineering attacks are mainly common because of the ease of execution and the high probability of victimization. A popular way of combatting Social  Engineering attacks is by increasing the user’s ability to detect indicators of attack, which requires a level of cybersecurity education. While the number of cybersecurity training programs is increasing, Social Engineering attacks are still very successful. Therefore, education programs  need to be improved to effectively increase the ability of users to notice indicators of attack. This research aimed to answer the question - what teaching method results in the greatest learning gains  for understanding Social Engineering concepts? This was done by investigating text-based,  gamification, and adversarial thinking teaching methods. These three teaching methods were used  to deliver lessons on an online platform to a sample of Purdue students. After conducting analysis,  both text-based and adversarial thinking showed significant improvement in the understanding of  Social Engineering concepts within the student sample. After conducting a follow-up test, a single  teaching method was not found to be better among the three teaching methods. However, this study  did find two teaching methods that can be used to develop training programs to help decrease the  total number of successful Social Engineering attacks across industries. </p>

<p>How is research and science being used in political debate? An idea analysis of the debate about försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd (decision tool in healthcare security)</p><p>This is a case study on different types of research use (utilization) The aim of this paper is to examine how the politicians make use of expertise and research in the parliamentary debate surrounding the decision tool in healthcare security (försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd). The aim is also to find out to what extent different types of research use are present in this debate. In this case study the qualitative method of idea analysis is being used on the empirical material. The tool of analysis is based upon the theories of research use by Amara et al. (building on Beyer) and Carol Weiss. My conclusion is that the most common type of research use in this debate is the symbolic, followed by the conceptual type. The instrumental type of research use is the least frequent one in this debate.</p>

Yes / In the health care systems, a high security level is required to protect extremely sensitive patient records. The goal is to provide a secure access to the right records at the right time with high patient privacy. As the most accurate biometric system, the iris recognition can play a significant role in healthcare applications for accurate patient identification. In this paper, the corner stone towards building a fast and robust iris recognition system for healthcare applications is addressed, which is known as iris localization. Iris localization is an essential step for efficient iris recognition systems. The presence of extraneous features such as eyelashes, eyelids, pupil and reflection spots make the correct iris localization challenging. In this paper, an efficient and automatic method is presented for the inner and outer iris boundary localization. The inner pupil boundary is detected after eliminating specular reflections using a combination of thresholding and morphological operations. Then, the outer iris boundary is detected using the modified Circular Hough transform. An efficient preprocessing procedure is proposed to enhance the iris boundary by applying 2D Gaussian filter and Histogram equalization processes. In addition, the pupil’s parameters (e.g. radius and center coordinates) are employed to reduce the search time of the Hough transform by discarding the unnecessary edge points within the iris region. Finally, a robust and fast eyelids detection algorithm is developed which employs an anisotropic diffusion filter with Radon transform to fit the upper and lower eyelids boundaries. The performance of the proposed method is tested on two databases: CASIA Version 1.0 and SDUMLA-HMT iris database. The Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. Moreover, a comparative study with other established methods is also carried out.

How is research and science being used in political debate? An idea analysis of the debate about försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd (decision tool in healthcare security) This is a case study on different types of research use (utilization) The aim of this paper is to examine how the politicians make use of expertise and research in the parliamentary debate surrounding the decision tool in healthcare security (försäkringsmedicinskt beslutsstöd). The aim is also to find out to what extent different types of research use are present in this debate. In this case study the qualitative method of idea analysis is being used on the empirical material. The tool of analysis is based upon the theories of research use by Amara et al. (building on Beyer) and Carol Weiss. My conclusion is that the most common type of research use in this debate is the symbolic, followed by the conceptual type. The instrumental type of research use is the least frequent one in this debate.