Background: COVID-19 has challenged the resilience of the health care information system, which has affected our ability to achieve the global goal of health and well-being. The pandemic has resulted in a number of recent cyberattacks on hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the World Health Organization and its partners, and others. Objective: The aim of this review was to identify key cybersecurity challenges, solutions adapted by the health sector, and areas of improvement needed to counteract the recent increases in cyberattacks (eg, phishing campaigns and ransomware attacks), which have been used by attackers to exploit vulnerabilities in technology and people introduced through changes to working practices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A scoping review was conducted by searching two major scientific databases (PubMed and Scopus) using the search formula “(covid OR healthcare) AND cybersecurity.” Reports, news articles, and industry white papers were also included if they were related directly to previously published works, or if they were the only available sources at the time of writing. Only articles in English published in the last decade were included (ie, 2011-2020) in order to focus on current issues, challenges, and solutions. Results: We identified 9 main challenges in cybersecurity, 11 key solutions that health care organizations adapted to address these challenges, and 4 key areas that need to be strengthened in terms of cybersecurity capacity in the health sector. We also found that the most prominent and significant methods of cyberattacks that occurred during the pandemic were related to phishing, ransomware, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and malware. Conclusions: This scoping review identified the most impactful methods of cyberattacks that targeted the health sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the challenges in cybersecurity, solutions, and areas in need of improvement. We provided useful insights to the health sector on cybersecurity issues during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other epidemics or pandemics that may materialize in the future.

Digital devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and interconnected. Their evolution to intelligent parts of a digital ecosystem creates novel applications with so far unresolved security issues. A particular example is a vehicle. As vehicles evolve from simple means of transportation to smart entities with new sensing and communication capabilities, they become active members of a smart city. The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) consists of vehicles that communicate with each other and with public networks through V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle), V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) and V2P (vehicle-to-pedestrian) interactions, which enables both the collection and the real-time sharing of critical information about the condition on the road network. The Social Internet of Things (SIoT) introduces social relationships among objects, creating a social network where the participants are not humans, but intelligent objects. In this article, we explore the concept of the Social Internet of Vehicles (SIoV), a network that enables social interactions both among vehicles and among drivers. We discuss technologies and components of the SIoV, possible applications and issues of security, privacy and trust that are likely to arise.

The adoption of blockchain technology is taking place at a fast pace. Security features inherent in blockchain make it resistant to attack, but they do not make it immune, and blockchain security risks do exists. This paper details the associated risks and concerns of the blockchain. We explore relevant standards and regulations related to blockchain and survey and analyze 38 blockchain incidents to determine the root cause to provide a view of the most frequent vulnerabilities exploited. The paper reviews six of these 38 incidents in greater detail. The selection is made by choosing incidents with the most frequent root cause. In the review of the incidents, the paper details what happened and why and aims to address what could have been done to mitigate the attack. The paper concludes with a recommendation on a framework to reduce cyber security risks when using blockchain technologies.

As organisations are vulnerable to cyberattacks, their protection becomes a significant issue. Capability Maturity Models can enable organisations to benchmark current maturity levels against best practices. Although many maturity models have been already proposed in the literature, a need for models that integrate several regulations exists. This article presents a light, web-based model that can be used as a cybersecurity assessment tool for Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) of the United Kingdom. The novel Holistic Cybersecurity Maturity Assessment Framework incorporates all security regulations, privacy regulations, and best practices that HEIs must be compliant to, and can be used as a self assessment or a cybersecurity audit tool.