With the hospital and health sectors attack surface wide open it’s surprising that more isn’t being done to educate staff on proper cybersecurity hygiene. The attack surface is compounded by the exponential expansion of the IoT and lack of up to date BYOD protocols. HIPAA and patient record privacy are a moot point when unpatched vulnerabilities in applications are exploited by bad actors. The healthcare industry as a whole needs to move toward a more cybersecurity-centric culture as the physical and cyber environments continue to merge.

The point of this easy to intellectually digest book series is to introduce basic cybersecurity with nursing informatics, hospital information technology, HIPAA compliance and health IT. When health sector staff can more easily identify spear phishing, spoofed browsers and other malicious enticements by hackers, each organization will be less prone to breaches. Bad actors are becoming more targeted, stealthy and creative with their exploit kits and zero days. Ransomware, RATs, Droppers and drive-by downloads are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the adversaries attack arsenal for invading the healthcare division of our Nation’s critical infrastructure.

The reader is encouraged to make all five volumes of this book series part of their professional library to enhance their ongoing professional development. This series shows how to be vigilant about cybersecurity without being Orwellian while brushing up or being introduced to health IT and healthcare informatics.