Extending the Temporal Neuro-Financial Vulnerability Theory (TNFVT) to Healthcare Settings

The Temporal Neuro-Financial Vulnerability Theory (TNFVT) proposes that cybersecurity vulnerability is not a fixed individual trait but a dynamic state that shifts with a person's underlying physiological and cognitive condition. The original framework focused on financial professionals.This outline extends the same core construct — the vulnerability window — to healthcare settings, specifically nurses and clinical staff. Here the proposed trigger is not market-driven neurochemical change but cognitive depletion arising from shift fatigue, high patient load, and accumulated decision fatigue across a clinical shift.The core hypothesis is structurally identical to the original TNFVT model: as cognitive and physiological resources are depleted, the capacity to detect deceptive digital stimuli — phishing emails, spoofed system notifications, social engineering targeting hospital information systems — declines measurably at predictable points within a shift or roster cycle.This work draws on two established lines of research.Dart and Ahmed (2023) demonstrated that human and social factors underlie most cybersecurity incidents in large Australian healthcare environments, identifying the behavioural drivers involved. Guidetti, Speelman and Bouhlas (2023) synthesized existing fNIRS evidence to propose an identifiable cerebral haemodynamic signature of sustained attention degradation, providing a measurement foundation for the underlying state.Where these studies establish why security failures occur and how attention degrades, TNFVT asks a further question: when vulnerability peaks, and whether that timing can be anticipated — tied to observable indicators of fatigue and cognitive load across a shift.