False image injection prevention using iChain

The advances in information and communication technology are consistently beneficial for the healthcare sector. A trend in the healthcare sector is the progressive shift in how data are acquired and the storage of such data in different facilities, such as in the cloud, due to the efficiency and effectiveness offered. Digital images related to healthcare are sensitive in nature and require maximum security and privacy. A malicious entity can tamper with such stored digital images to mislead healthcare personnel and the consequences of wrong diagnosis are harmful for both parties. A new type of cyber attack, a false image injection attack (FIIA) is introduced in this paper. Existing image tampering detection measures are unable to guarantee tamper-proof medical data in real time. Inspired by the effectiveness of emerging blockchain technology, a security framework, image chain (iChain) is proposed in this paper to ensure the security and privacy of the sensitive healthcare images. The practical challenges associated with the proposed framework and further research that is required are also highlighted

Application of quality function deployment in redesigning website: A case study on TV3

Internet technology has been used by most of the organizations in the world today. One of the primary vehicles of information gathering and dissemination in today’s world is organizational website. This research evaluates the performance of the present TV3 (a popular private television station in Malaysia) website. By means of an on-line survey and a few focus group discussions, it also identifies the website viewer requirements and their corresponding importance level. Subsequently, the technical requirements are identified that can fulfill the viewer requirements. A House of Quality (HOQ) is built to find the relationship between the viewer and technical requirements. The Quality Function Deployment (QFD) exercise provides the prioritized technical requirements, which is expected to guide the TV3 website development and maintenance team in its future website redesigning project. The findings of the research are also expected to provide some insight in other organizations in similar need.Quality Function Deployment; Website development; Erbsite quality evaluation; TV3;Malaysia

Developing quality heathcare software using quality function deployment: A case study based on Sultan Qaboos University Hospital

Development of software is one of the most expensive projects undertaken in practice. Traditionally, the rate of failure in software development projects is higher compared to other kinds of projects. This is partly due to the failure in determining software users’ requirements. By using Quality Function Deployment (QFD), this research focuses on identification and prioritization of users’ requirements in the context of developing quality health-care software system for Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH) in Oman. A total of 95 staff working at eight departments of SQUH were contacted and they were requested to provide their requirements in using hospital information systems. Analytic Hierarchy Process has been integrated with QFD for prioritizing those user requirements. Then, in consultation with a number of software engineers, a list consisting of 30 technical requirements was generated. These requirements are divided into seven categories and all of them are purported to satisfy the user needs. At the end of QFD exercise, continuous mirror backup from backup category, multi-level access from the security and confidentiality category, linkage to databases from application category emerge as technical requirements having higher weights. These technical requirements should receive considerable attention when designing the health-care software system for SQUH.Software quality; Quality function deployment; Healthcare software; Analytic Hierarchy Process

Building consumers’ confidence in adopting e-commerce: A Malaysian case

Consumers’ confidence on the online transactions is vital for the continuous growth and development of electronic commerce. In the present study, we experimentally investigate the measures of consumers’ perceived security and privacy over online transactions as well as the perceived trust and reliability of online vendors in order to influence consumers’ overall confidence in e-commerce transactions. On the basis of responses from 163 participants, it is concluded that the major concerns in e-commerce adoption are: security and privacy over online transaction process and trust and reliability of online vendors. In order to be successful in electronic marketplace, the organisations are expected to expend their resources and exert efforts to ensure that consumers’ concerns are adequately addressed.e-commerce; security and privacy; trust; online vendors; consumer behaviour; Malaysia

Evaluating staff attitudes, intentions, and behaviors related to cyber security in large Australian health care environments: Mixed methods study

Background: Previous studies have identified that the effective management of cyber security in large health care environments is likely to be significantly impacted by human and social factors, as well as by technical controls. However, there have been limited attempts to confirm this by using measured and integrated studies to identify specific user motivations and behaviors that can be managed to achieve improved outcomes. Objective: This study aims to document and analyze survey and interview data from a diverse range of health care staff members, to determine the primary motivations and behaviors that influence their acceptance and application of cyber security messaging and controls. By identifying these issues, recommendations can be made to positively influence future cyber security governance in health care. Methods: An explanatory sequential mixed methods approach was undertaken to analyze quantitative data from a web-based staff survey (N=103), with a concurrent qualitative investigation applied to data gathered via in-depth staff interviews (N=9). Data from both stages of this methodology were mapped to descriptive variables based on a modified version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; TAM2). After normalization, the quantitative data were verified and analyzed using descriptive statistics, distribution and linearity measures, and a bivariate correlation of the TAM variables to identify the Pearson coefficient (r) and significance (P) values. Finally, after confirming Cronbach , the determinant score for multicollinearity, and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure, and applying the Bartlett test of sphericity (X2), an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to identify the primary factors with an eigenvalue ( ) \u3e 1.0. Comments captured during the qualitative interviews were coded using NVivo software (QSR International) to create an emic-to-etic understanding, which was subsequently integrated with the quantitative results to produce verified conclusions. Results: Using the explanatory sequential methodology, this study showed that the perceived usefulness of security controls emerged as the most significant factor influencing staff beliefs and behaviors. This variable represented 24% of all the variances measured in the EFA and was also the most common category identified across all coded interviews (281/692, 40.6%). The word frequency analysis showed that systems, patients, and people represented the top 3 recurring themes reported by the interviewees. Conclusions: To improve cyber security governance in large health care environments, efforts should be focused on demonstrating how confidentiality, integrity, availability, policies, and cloud or vendor-based controls (the main contributors of usefulness measured by the EFA) can directly improve outcomes for systems, staff, and patients. Further consideration also needs to be given to how clinicians should share data and collaborate on patient care, with tools and processes provided to support and manage data sharing securely and to achieve a consistent baseline of secure and normalized behaviors

A data taxonomy for adaptive multifactor authentication in the internet of health care things

The health care industry has faced various challenges over the past decade as we move toward a digital future where services and data are available on demand. The systems of interconnected devices, users, data, and working environments are referred to as the Internet of Health Care Things (IoHT). IoHT devices have emerged in the past decade as cost-effective solutions with large scalability capabilities to address the constraints on limited resources. These devices cater to the need for remote health care services outside of physical interactions. However, IoHT security is often overlooked because the devices are quickly deployed and configured as solutions to meet the demands of a heavily saturated industry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, studies have shown that cybercriminals are exploiting the health care industry, and data breaches are targeting user credentials through authentication vulnerabilities. Poor password use and management and the lack of multifactor authentication security posture within IoHT cause a loss of millions according to the IBM reports. Therefore, it is important that health care authentication security moves toward adaptive multifactor authentication (AMFA) to replace the traditional approaches to authentication. We identified a lack of taxonomy for data models that particularly focus on IoHT data architecture to improve the feasibility of AMFA. This viewpoint focuses on identifying key cybersecurity challenges in a theoretical framework for a data model that summarizes the main components of IoHT data. The data are to be used in modalities that are suited for health care users in modern IoHT environments and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To establish the data taxonomy, a review of recent IoHT papers was conducted to discuss the related work in IoHT data management and use in next-generation authentication systems. Reports, journal articles, conferences, and white papers were reviewed for IoHT authentication data technologies in relation to the problem statement of remote authentication and user management systems. Only publications written in English from the last decade were included (2012-2022) to identify key issues within the current health care practices and their management of IoHT devices. We discuss the components of the IoHT architecture from the perspective of data management and sensitivity to ensure privacy for all users. The data model addresses the security requirements of IoHT users, environments, and devices toward the automation of AMFA in health care. We found that in health care authentication, the significant threats occurring were related to data breaches owing to weak security options and poor user configuration of IoHT devices. The security requirements of IoHT data architecture and identified impactful methods of cybersecurity for health care devices, data, and their respective attacks are discussed. Data taxonomy provides better understanding, solutions, and improvements of user authentication in remote working environments for security features

An Application of Pareto Analysis and Cause-and-Effect Diagram (CED) for Minimizing Rejection of Raw Materials in Lamp Production Process

Flange tube, Glass shell, Lead in Wire (LIW), Filament (Coil) and Cap are the most important raw materials in case of Lamp Production Process. Manufacturing processes tend to produce operational wastages due to various reasons, which can be reduced by identifying and eliminating those reasons. It has been a very challenging engineering problem particularly in a multistage manufacturing, where maximum number of processes and activities are performed. With the help of Pareto diagrams, which are mostly used to identify critical areas, the manufacturing process defects in the each stage of the production belt have been prioritized by arranging them in decreasing order of importance. Then cause and effect diagram is being applied to explore possible causes/factors of defects and to determine the causes/factors, which has the greatest effect. Key words: Lamp production process; Multistage manufacturing; Pareto diagrams; Production belt; Cause and effect diagra

Unifying context with labeled property graph: A pipeline-based system for comprehensive text representation in NLP

Extracting valuable insights from vast amounts of unstructured digital text presents significant challenges across diverse domains. This research addresses this challenge by proposing a novel pipeline-based system that generates domain-agnostic and task-agnostic text representations. The proposed approach leverages labeled property graphs (LPG) to encode contextual information, facilitating the integration of diverse linguistic elements into a unified representation. The proposed system enables efficient graph-based querying and manipulation by addressing the crucial aspect of comprehensive context modeling and fine-grained semantics. The effectiveness of the proposed system is demonstrated through the implementation of NLP components that operate on LPG-based representations. Additionally, the proposed approach introduces specialized patterns and algorithms to enhance specific NLP tasks, including nominal mention detection, named entity disambiguation, event enrichments, event participant detection, and temporal link detection. The evaluation of the proposed approach, using the MEANTIME corpus comprising manually annotated documents, provides encouraging results and valuable insights into the system\u27s strengths. The proposed pipeline-based framework serves as a solid foundation for future research, aiming to refine and optimize LPG-based graph structures to generate comprehensive and semantically rich text representations, addressing the challenges associated with efficient information extraction and analysis in NLP

Mitigating Financial Burden of Elderly through Social Protection Schemes: Issues and Challenges for Pakistan

The study on social protection programs for elderly in Pakistan indicates an absence of concrete and clear frameworks developed by government. Most social security and cash assistance programs for the elderly are ad hoc arrangements which are made in response to circumstantial demands or advocated by international donor organizations which usually have their own agenda and priority. Ageing is the reality of every individual’s life therefore it is important to save the social status of elderly people & ensure a progressive life. It is also observed that there are programs and frameworks but contains duplication and overlapping that create hurdles in designing a comprehensive and purposeful social protection strategy for elderly in Pakistan. The lack of such initiatives can cause difficulty for elderly people in planning their future. This paper presents a review of available programs offered for elderly in Pakistan in order to reduce the financial burden and what challenges are faced by them in accessing information about these programs. The paper also looks at identifying gaps and suggests a “way forward” for future contribution towards this important yet ignored issue. The paper recommends that social protection have been categorized in policies process, design and delivery & financing and they must be planned, monitored& evaluated effectively to improve the quality of life of elderly people in Pakistan

False data injection attack (FDIA): An overview and new metrics for fair evaluation of its countermeasure

The concept of false data injection attack (FDIA) was introduced originally in the smart grid domain. While the term sounds common, it specifically means the case when an attacker compromises sensor readings in such tricky way that undetected errors are introduced into calculations of state variables and values. Due to the rapid growth of the Internet and associated complex adaptive systems, cyber attackers are interested in exploiting similar attacks in other application domains such as healthcare, finance, defense, governance, etc. In today’s increasingly perilous cyber world of complex adaptive systems, FDIA has become one of the top-priority issues to deal with. It is a necessity today for greater awareness and better mechanism to counter such attack in the cyberspace. Hence, this work presents an overview of the attack, identifies the impact of FDIA in critical domains, and talks about the countermeasures. A taxonomy of the existing countermeasures to defend against FDIA is provided. Unlike other works, we propose some evaluation metrics for FDIA detection and also highlight the scarcity of benchmark datasets to validate the performance of FDIA detection techniques. [Figure not available: see fulltext.] © 2020, The Author(s)