Information Security Risk Assessment: Towards a Business Practice Perspective

Information security risk assessments (ISRAs) are of great importance for organisations. Current ISRA methods identify an organisation’s security risks and provide a measured, analysed security risk profile of critical information assets in order to build plans to treat risk. However, despite prevalent use in organisations today, current methods adopt a limited view of information assets during risk identification. In the context of day-to-day activities, people copy, print and discuss information, leading to the ‘leakage’ of information assets. Employees will create and use unofficial assets as part of their day-to-day routines. Furthermore, employees will also possess important knowledge on how to perform their functions within a business process or information system. These are all elements of business ‘practice’, a perspective that would yield a richer and holistic understanding of an organisation’s information assets and vulnerabilities. This perspective is not captured by traditional ISRA methods, leading to an incomplete view of an organisation’s information systems and processes that could prove detrimental and damaging. This paper hence suggests that a business practice perspective be incorporated into ISRA methods in order to identify information leakage, unofficial, critical information assets and critical process knowledge of organisations

Smokejumper Magazine, October 2000

This issue of the National Smokejumper Association (NSA) Smokejumper Magazine contains the following articles: Bob Caldwell (added profile), Failure of Controlled Burning New Mexico, Early Water Bombing (Wally Henderson), Region 8 Smokejumping (Delos Dutton), The Video Project (Steve Smith). Smokejumper Magazine continues Static Line, which was the original title of the NSA quarterly magazine.https://dc.ewu.edu/smokejumper_mag/1028/thumbnail.jp

Introduction:Mortality in Design

Digital design for mortals. Precisely what is unsettling about modern technological construction is that, instead of holding together earth and sky, mortals and divinities, it penetrates the earth to extract resources, pushes beyond the sky with rockets and satellites, attempts to suppress mortality with medicine and drugs, and precisely in this attempt to control the body, rejects the art of dying, and thereby and in the very process the remembering of the divinities that is the most intimate part of human suffering. More than ten years old now, Carl Mitcham’s reflection on the performance of vernacular architecture (the building of his own house in fact) is a powerful statement about the tendency of modern technology to suppress human mortality and with it the expression of the human spirit. Precisely what is unsettling about modern technological construction is that, instead of holding together earth and sky, mortals and divinities, it penetrates the earth to extract resources, pushes beyond the sky with rockets and satellites, attempts to suppress mortality with medicine and drugs, and precisely in this attempt to control the body, rejects the art of dying, and thereby and in the very process the remembering of the divinities that is the most intimate part of human suffering

Comorbidity, Pain, Utilization, and Psychosocial Outcomes in Older versus Younger Sickle Cell Adults: The PiSCES Project

Background. Patients with SCD now usually live well into adulthood. Whereas transitions into adulthood are now often studied, little is published about aging beyond the transition period. We therefore studied age-associated SCD differences in utilization, pain, and psychosocial variables. Methods. Subjects were 232 adults in the Pain in Sickle Cell Epidemiology Study (PiSCES). Data included demographics, comorbidity, and psychosocial measures. SCD-related pain and health care utilization were recorded in diaries. We compared 3 age groups: 16–25 (transition), 26–36 (younger adults), and 37–64 (older adults) years. Results. Compared to the 2 adult groups, the transition group reported fewer physical challenges via comorbidities, somatic complaints, and pain frequency, though pain intensity did not differ on crisis or noncrisis pain days. The transition group utilized opioids less often, made fewer ambulatory visits, and had better quality of life, but these differences disappeared after adjusting for pain and comorbidities. However, the transition group reported more use of behavioral coping strategies. Conclusion. We found fewer biological challenges, visits, and better quality of life, in transition-aged versus older adults with SCD, but more behavioral coping. Further study is required to determine whether age-appropriate health care, behavioral, or other interventions could improve age-specific life challenges of patients with SCD

Asset Identification in Information Security Risk Assessment: A Business Practice Approach

Organizations apply information security risk assessment (ISRA) methodologies to systematically and comprehensively identify information assets and related security risks. We review the ISRA literature and identify three key deficiencies in current methodologies that stem from their traditional accountancy-based perspective and a limited view of organizational “assets”. In response, we propose a novel rich description method (RDM) that adopts a less formal and more holistic view of information and knowledge assets that exist in modern work environments. We report on an in-depth case study to explore the potential for improved asset identification enabled by the RDM compared to traditional ISRAs. The comparison shows how the RDM addresses the three key deficiencies of current ISRAs by providing: 1) a finer level of granularity for identifying assets, 2) a broader coverage of assets that reflects the informal aspects of business practices, and 3) the identification of critical knowledge assets

Health related quality of life in sickle cell patients: The PiSCES project

BACKGROUND: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a chronic disease associated with high degrees of morbidity and increased mortality. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among adults with sickle cell disease has not been widely reported. METHODS: We administered the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short-Form to 308 patients in the Pain in Sickle Cell Epidemiology Study (PiSCES) to assess HRQOL. Scales included physical function, physical and emotional role function, bodily pain, vitality, social function, mental health, and general health. We compared scores with national norms using t-tests, and with three chronic disease cohorts: asthma, cystic fibrosis and hemodialysis patients using analysis of variance and Dunnett's test for comparison with a control. We also assessed whether SCD specific variables (genotype, pain, crisis and utilization) were independently predictive of SF-36 subscales, controlling for socio-demographic variables using regression. RESULTS: Patients with SCD scored significantly worse than national norms on all subscales except mental health. Patients with SCD had lower HRQOL than cystic fibrosis patients except for mental health. Scores were similar for physical function, role function and mental health as compared to asthma patients, but worse for bodily pain, vitality, social function and general health subscales. Compared to dialysis patients, sickle cell disease patients scored similarly on physical role and emotional role function, social functioning and mental health, worse on bodily pain, general health and vitality and better on physical functioning. Surprisingly, genotype did not influence HRQOL except for vitality. However, scores significantly decreased as pain levels increased. CONCLUSION: SCD patients experience health related quality of life worse than the general population, and in general, their scores were most similar to patients undergoing hemodialysis. Practitioners should regard their HRQOL as severely compromised. Interventions in SCD should consider improvements in health related quality of life as important outcomes

How Patients\u27 Self-Disclosure about Sickle Cell Pain Episodes to Significant Others Relates to Living with Sickle Cell Disease

Objectives: This cross-sectional study examines to whom and how fully sickle cell disease (SCD) patients talk to others about sickle cell pain, how helpful it is to talk with others about these pain episodes, and the association between talking to others about sickle cell pain episodes and patients\u27 psychological adjustment and coping strategies in managing the disease. Methods: A convenience sample of 73 African American patients with SCD (30 men and 43 women), were recruited from two SCD clinics at the time of routine medical visits. Most participants had been diagnosed with hemoglobin SS, and they reported an average number of 8.61 pain episodes in the previous 12 months. Participants were asked to whom, how fully, and how helpful it was to talk to significant others about SCD pain episodes experienced in the last 12 months. Patients also completed measures of their psychological adjustment as well as how they would manage a future sickle cell pain episode. Self-report ratings were made on Likert-type scales. Results: Based on paired samples t-tests, participants talked significantly more fully about their thoughts and feelings concerning pain episodes to God and to their primary medical providers than to either their parents, siblings, or an intimate partner/close friend. Bivariate correlations indicated that amount and helpfulness of talking about pain episodes to God and to parents were significantly associated with better psychological adjustment on selected measures. Also, bivariate correlations indicated that helpfulness in talking with siblings, intimate partner/close friend, and primary medical providers was positively related with willingness to go to a physician in the event of a future pain episode. Conclusions: The results document to whom and how helpful it is to talk with others about SCD pain episodes and how SCD disclosure is related to strategies for managing this disease

Long-term outcome with the automatic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator

AbstractThe automatic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator was implanted in 270 patients because of life-threatening arrhythmias over a 7 year period. There was a history of sustained ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation, or both, in 96% of these patients, 80% had one or more prior cardiac arrests and 78% had coronary artery disease as their underlying diagnosis. The average ejection fraction was 34%, and 96% of these patients had had an average of 3.4 antiarrhythmic drug failures per patient before defibrillator implantation. There were four perioperative deaths and eight patients had generator infection or generator erosion, or both, during the perioperative period or during long-term follow-up. Concomitant antiarrhythmic drug therapy was given to 69% of patients.Shocks from the device were given to 58% of patients, and 20% received “problematic” shocks. The device was removed from 16 patients during long-term follow-up for a variety of reasons. There were 7 sudden cardiac deaths and 30 nonsudden cardiac deaths, 18 of which were secondary to congestive heart failure. The actuarial incidence of sudden death, total cardiac death and total mortality from all causes was 1%, 7% and 8%, respectively, at 1 year, and 4%, 24% and 26% at 5 years.The automatic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator nearly eliminates sudden death over a long-term follow-up period in a high risk group of patients. It has an acceptable rate of complications or problems, or both, and most late deaths in these patients are nonsudden and of cardiovascular origin

AAPT Diagnostic Criteria for Chronic Sickle Cell Disease Pain

Pain in sickle cell disease (SCD) is associated with increased morbidity, mortality, and high health care costs. Although episodic acute pain is the hallmark of this disorder, there is an increasing awareness that chronic pain is part of the pain experience of many older adolescents and adults. A common set of criteria for classifying chronic pain associated with SCD would enhance SCD pain research efforts in epidemiology, pain mechanisms, and clinical trials of pain management interventions, and ultimately improve clinical assessment and management. As part of the collaborative effort between the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations Innovations Opportunities and Networks public-private partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the American Pain Society, the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations Innovations Opportunities and Networks-American Pain Society Pain Taxonomy initiative developed the outline of an optimal diagnostic system for chronic pain conditions. Subsequently, a working group of experts in SCD pain was convened to generate core diagnostic criteria for chronic pain associated with SCD. The working group synthesized available literature to provide evidence for the dimensions of this disease-specific pain taxonomy. A single pain condition labeled chronic SCD pain was derived with 3 modifiers reflecting different clinical features. Future systematic research is needed to evaluate the feasibility, validity, and reliability of these criteria. Perspective: An evidence-based classification system for chronic SCD pain was constructed for the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations Innovations Opportunities and Networks-American Pain Society Pain Taxonomy initiative. Applying this taxonomy may improve assessment and management of SCD pain and accelerate research on epidemiology, mechanisms, and treatments for chronic SCD pain