The health sector’s increasing dependence on digital information and communication infrastructures renders it vulnerable to threats to privacy and cybersecurity, especially as the theft of health data has become particularly lucrative for cyber criminals. At the same time, a breach of integrity of health data can have dramatic consequences for the patients affected.
The KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence (KIOS CoE) is participating in a new project entitled “CUREX: seCUre and pRivate hEalth data eXchange”, which addresses comprehensively the protection of the confidentiality and integrity of health data by producing a novel, flexible and scalable situational awareness-oriented platform. It allows a healthcare provider to assess the realistic cybersecurity and privacy risks they are exposed to and suggest optimal strategies for addressing these risks with safeguards tailored specifically for each business case and application.
As a result, CUREX will safeguard patients’ privacy and increase their trust in the currently vulnerable critical healthcare information infrastructures, especially in cases where data is exchanged among healthcare stakeholders within any business, operational and systemic cross-border environment.
Furthermore, CUREX will help healthcare institutions to: (i) assess and address their cybersecurity and privacy risks with regard to health data exchange efficiently, accurately and effectively and (ii) enhance the cybersecurity and privacy awareness among the organization’s personnel.
The KIOS CoE participates in the project as a key partner, and will contribute in the development of tools for evaluating and determining security threats in the information infrastructures of healthcare institutions, as well as in the design of strategies to raise cybersecurity and privacy awareness of different employee groups within the healthcare organization.
The kickoff meeting of the project took place on January 24th – 25th 2019, at University of Piraeus, Athens (Piraeus), Greece. The kickoff meeting marked the beginning of the project and focused on the identification of the user requirements that will drive the design of the CUREX platform.
The CUREX project is supported by a multidisciplinary consortium with participation of 16 organizations, from Sweden, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The partnership combines the expertise of two large ICT companies, three healthcare organizations, six SMEs, and five academic/research institutions. The project is coordinated by the University of Piraeus Research Center, Greece.
Project website: http://www.curex-project.eu/
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 826404.
