Critical infrastructure protection (CIP) activities are intended to enhance the cyber and physical security of both the public and private infrastructures that are essential to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. This talk looks at the Cybersecurity aspects of Public Health and Health Care sector critical infrastructure. Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)- 7 designated certain federal agencies as lead federal points of contact for the critical infrastructure sectors identified in this Strategy. These agencies are responsible for infrastructure protection activities in their assigned sectors and are to coordinate and collaborate with relevant federal agencies, state, and local governments, and the private sector to carry out related responsibilities. While focusing on information assurance and critical infrastructure protection, this presentation will discuss the challenges authorities face in fulfilling such a mission. A series of topics ranging from individual health care records, to decision support systems and telemedicine for mass-care is presented. Certain Public Health aspects and implications that affect both our National Security and Homeland Security Strategies, in particular, are presented in the context of the National and Global Health Information Infrastructures. A three dimensional model that was developed and used to frame the challenges of Homeland Security will be described. Policy issues and guidance that links critical infrastructure protection to agency information protection and the influence on other critical infrastructure sectors are also discussed. One of the key issues is the “missing” risk assessment practice required to do proper evaluation of the threats, vulnerabilities and consequences, to the key assets of the public health infrastructure. This factor, together with the interdependencies of threat impact areas to the critical infrastructure protection are not well understood as shown during the responses to the flu vaccine crisis of 2004 or the response to hurricane Katrina during the summer of 2005. What are the steps that we should take and what are the lessons learned from these crises that would help us avoid or minimize, at least, the effects of a pandemic flu, a nuclear or bioterrorist attack or simply another major natural catastrophe hitting our nation? What is the role of the biomedical engineer under these circumstances?

Dr. Kun is the Senior Research Professor of Homeland Security at the IRMC of the National Defense University, where he is the Course Manager for the Homeland Security curricula. He graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy in Uruguay; and has a BSEE, MSEE and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering all 3 degrees from UCLA.

His extensive background on Information Technology, Medical and Public Health Informatics, includes 14 years with IBM where he :developed the first six clinical applications for the IBM PC; was one of the pioneers on bedside terminals for Intensive Care and developer of a semi-expert, real-time, clinical decision support system; was the technical manager of the Nursing Point of Care System; the biomedical engineer in the team of 4 that developed the first Teleradiology system and the first Picture Archival and Communications Systems, to run on an IBM platform. He was Director of Medical Systems Technology and Strategic Planning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA.As Senior IT Advisor for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (1996-98) he formulated the IT vision and was the lead staff for HPCC program and Telehealth. Co-author of the Reports to the Congress on Telemedicine (1997) and on HIPAA Security. He was an invited speaker to the White House, highly responsible for the Telemedicine portion of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Kun represented the DHHS Secretary at a Pan American Forum of Health Care Ministers on Telecommunications and the Health Care Industry in Mexico in 1997. He was a Distinguished Fellow at the CDC (1999-2001) Senior Computer Scientist for the Health Alert Network for Bioterrorism and as the Acting Chief Information Technology Officer he formulated the IT vision for the National Immunization Program (NIP) (10/2000). Since 1980, Dr. Kun had many academic adjunct appointments at: UCLA, UT Arlington and UTSMC in Dallas; at UTMB Galveston, at Rutgers University in NJ & at Emory University, In the past 25 years he has written a large number of articles, book chapters / sections, and is currently the Editor in Chief of the “Handbook of Biomedical Information Technology” for Elsevier. He has lectured on medical and public health informatics, information technology and biomedical engineering in over 50 countries. He is in the IEEE Computer Science Distinguished Visitor Program for both the US and Latin America and is/was in the advisory board of many magazines and professional journals. He has served as an invited: Conference, track or session chair, tutorial, special symposia, and/or publications, invited speaker / keynote speaker and in conference scientific committees, etc. over 160 times. Dr. Kun is an IEEE Fellow. He received the “2002 - IEEE-USA Citation of Honor Award”: “For exemplary contributions in the inception and implementation of a health care information technology vision in the United States.” He is Chairman of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee and the Bioterrorism & Homeland Security WG for the IEEE-USA and for the American Institute of Medical & Biological Engineering (AIMBE), where he is also a Fellow and a member of the Boards of Directors (BOD). He is also in the BOD of the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES).