The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) spans decades, and the same can be said for its inclusion in healthcare. The IoT is an attractive target in medicine; it offers considerable potential in expanding care. However, the application of the IoT in healthcare is fraught with an array of challenges, and also, through it, numerous vulnerabilities that translate to wider attack surfaces and deeper degrees of damage possible to both consumers and their confidence within health systems, as a result of patient-specific data being available to access. Further, when IoT health devices (IoTHDs) are developed, a diverse range of attacks are possible. To understand the risks in this new landscape, it is important to understand the architecture of IoTHDs, operations, and the social dynamics that may govern their interactions. This paper aims to document and create a map regarding IoTHDs, lay the groundwork for better understanding security risks in emerging IoTHD modalities through a multi-layer approach, and suggest means for improved governance and interaction. We also discuss technological innovations expected to set the stage for novel exploits leading into the middle and latter parts of the 21st century.

Biocybersecurity is an evolving discipline that aims to identify the gaps and risks associated with the convergence of Biology (the science of life and living organisms) and cybersecurity (the science, study, and theory of cyberspace and cybernetics) to protect the bioeconomy. The biological industries’ increased reliance on digitization, automation, and computing power has resulted in benefits for the scientific community, it has simultaneously multiplied the risk factors associated with industrial espionage and the protection of data both commercial and proprietary. The sensitive and potentially destructive power of this data and its access inherently poses a risk to the national and ontological security of a nation. Ontological security refers to the extent to which an individual or group feels secure in their understanding of the world and their place in it. It is a psychological concept that pertains to the way in which people construct their sense of self and their place in the world, and how this sense of self and place is shaped by their interactions with others and the broader social, cultural, and political context in which they live.  Nation-states provide stability and wider social cohesion, but these capacities can be disrupted when the nation state is sufficiently threatened (Bolton, 2021). Leading to an interest in maintaining a national identity; which can have profound effects on the behavior of a nation. Targeted social engineering is aimed at exploiting the changing and damaged mental health of workers in life science enterprises who have not been trained in a sufficient manner to deal with these attacks. Failure to identify the existing vulnerabilities associated with social engineering would expose the bioeconomy to unnecessary risk. Numerous scholars have pointed towards growing risks of nation-state stability being increasingly threatened vs inadequate actions taken to match threats for defense; when reflecting on energy, food, construction materials and more from the multi-trillion US bioeconomy we see that the ground to cover is huge (George 2019, Jordan, 2020, Murch, 2018; Mueller 2021).  This paper seeks to discuss some of the existing vulnerabilities associated with social engineering attacks and the effects those attacks would have on the population's ontological security and spark conversations about ways in which ontological security of nation states are modified.

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Higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly relying on digital technologies for classroom and organizational management, but this puts them at higher risk for information and communication (ICT security attacks. Recent studies show that HEIs have experienced more security breaches in ICT security composed of both cybersecurity an information security. A literature review was conducted to identify common ICT security practices in HEIs over the last decade. 11 journal articles were profiled and analyzed, revealing threats to HEIs’ security and protective measures in terms of organizational security, technological security, physical security, and standards and frameworks. Security tools and techniques were grouped into categories with specific ways to protect ICT security. HEIs also implement general security standards and guidelines, such as the ISO 27000-series and Center for Internet Security (CIS) controls, in their framework. Through synthesis and analysis of ICT security tools and techniques among HEIs, this critical review hopes to provide research directions on IT governance that academic and technical administrators can further explore to secure their information resources.