Modeling the cybersecurity of hospitals in natural and man-made hazards

Hospital cybersecurity has become a growing concern with an increasing number of cyberattacks against hospitals and health care facilities. We aim to tackle this issue by developing a model to capture the vulnerabilities of cyber capabilities of hospitals during hazards and proposing novel techniques to address the vulnerabilities. In this paper, we propose a novel technique, called self-protecting electronic medical records (EMRs), to provide Medical Records Services in hospitals with higher cyber capabilities against communications failure and cyber terrorism. We use fault tree analysis, a top–down deductive risk assessment tool, to analyze the failure mechanism of Medical Records Services in hospitals with and without using the self-protecting EMR technique against hazards. This work provides a refined understanding of the interactions between cyberinfrastructure and hospital functioning in natural and man-made hazards, and contributes to preventing cascading failures in hospital functionality and enhancing resilience of health care systems and communities.