Security Threats to Critical Infrastructure: The Human Factor

In the 21st century, globalisation made corporate boundaries invisible and difficult to manage. This new macroeconomic transformation caused by globalisation introduced new challenges for critical infrastructure management. By replacing manual tasks with automated decision making and sophisticated technology, no doubt we feel much more secure than half a century ago. As the technological advancement takes root, so does the maturity of security threats. It is common that today’s critical infrastructures are operated by non-computer experts, e.g., nurses in healthcare, soldiers in military or firefighters in emergency services. In such challenging applications, protecting against insider attacks is often neither feasible nor economically possible, but these threats can be managed using suitable risk management strategies. Security technologies, e.g., firewalls, help protect data assets and computer systems against unauthorised entry. However, one area which is often largely ignored is the human factor of system security. Through social engineering techniques, malicious attackers are able to breach organisational security via people interactions. This paper presents a security awareness training framework, which can be used to train operators of critical infrastructure, on various social engineering security threats such as spear phishing, baiting, pretexting, amongst others

Comparing the clinical and prognostic impact of proximal versus nonproximal lesions in dominant right coronary artery ST-elevation myocardial infarction

Objective: To evaluate the prognostic significance of culprit lesion location in dominant right coronary artery (RCA) ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Background: In RCA STEMI, proximal culprit lesions have been shown to have higher rates of acute complications such as bradycardia and cardiogenic shock (CS) but data on mortality is limited. Methods: We retrospectively identified and analyzed data from consecutive patients with a dominant RCA STEMI who underwent either primary or rescue percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) between January 2003 and December 2016. We compared the rates of sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT), CS, intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP), temporary cardiac pacing (TCP) and death between culprit lesions located proximal and distal to the origin of the last right ventricular (RV) marginal artery >1 mm in diameter. Results: The 939 patients were included; 599 (63.7%) had a proximal lesion and 340 (36.3%) had a nonproximal lesion. The 801 (85.3%) underwent primary PCI and 138 (14.7%) underwent rescue PCI. There was no difference in first medical contact to balloon or fibrinolysis times between the groups; p =.98 and.71. There was no significant difference in the rate of sustained VT (3.0%vs. 3.2%, p =.85) but proximal lesions were more likely to develop CS (10.9%vs. 5.8%, p =.01), require IABP (7.3%vs.2.9%, p <.01) and TCP (6.3%vs. 2.6%, p =.01). Thirty-day mortality was higher for proximal lesions (5.0%vs. 0.9%, p <.01) particularly for those with CS (35.3%vs. 10.0%, p =.05). Conclusion: Culprit lesions located proximal to the origin of the last RV marginal artery had a higher rate of acute complications such as CS and mortality