A Linguistic Approach to Information Security Awareness Education in a Healthcare Environment

Part 3: Information Security Awareness and Culture International audience It is widely accepted that healthcare information security is extremely important and that security breaches will have serious consequences in many areas. Despite controls, such as legal frameworks, as well as ongoing research projects into healthcare information security and privacy, there is still an alarming number of healthcare information security breaches reported annually. In this paper, a linguistic approach, utilizing a vocabulary test, is proposed as a tool to determine security awareness levels of healthcare workers and to assist in educating them in security awareness aspects. A vocabulary-measuring instrument was developed and distributed to healthcare workers in a large South African hospital group. Results indicated that information security awareness levels are generally acceptable, but that potential problem areas exist between certain language groups, as well as between different business functions (departments). The study also shows that the proposed approach may offer significant advantages in information security awareness campaigns.