1,243 research outputs found

    Medical Internet of Things: A Survey of the Current Threat and Vulnerability Landscape

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    The Internet of things (IoT) is a system that utilizes the Internet to facilitate communication between sensors and devices. Given the ubiquitous nature of IoT devices, it is seemingly inevitable that IoT would be used as a conduit to transform healthcare. One such medical IoT (mIoT) device that is revolutionizing healthcare is the medical implant device. These mIoT implant devices which control insulin pumps, cardioverter defibrillators and bone growth stimulators have redefined the way patient data is accessed, and healthcare is delivered. These implant devices are a double-edged sword. While they allow for the effective and efficient noninvasive treatment of patients, this external communication makes the medical implants vulnerable to cyberattacks synonymous with IoT devices. As a result, privacy and security vulnerabilities have surfaced as pronounced challenges for mIoT devices. This work summarizes and synthesizes the inherent vulnerabilities associated with mIoT devices and the implications regarding patient safety

    Systematic Vulnerability Evaluation of Interoperable Medical Device System using Attack Trees

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    Security for medical devices has gained some attractions in the recent years following some well- publicized attacks on individual devices, such as pacemakers and insulin pumps. This has resulted in solutions being proposed for securing these devices, usually in stand-alone mode. Medical devices are however becoming increasingly interconnected and interoperable as a way to improve patient safety, decrease false alarms, and reduce clinician cognitive workload. Given the nature of interoperable medical devices (IMDs), attacks on IMDs can have devastating consequences. This work outlines our effort in understanding the threats faced by IMDs, an important first step in eventually designing secure interoperability architectures. A useful way of performing threat analysis of any system is to use attack trees. Attack trees are conceptual, multi-leveled diagrams showing how an asset, or target, might be attacked. They provide a formal, methodical way of describing the threats to a system. Developing attack trees for any system is however non-trivial and requires considerable expertise in identifying the various attack vectors. IMDs are typically deployed in hospitals by clinicians and clinical engineers who may not posses such expertise. We therefore develop a methodology that will enable the automated generation of attack trees for IMDs based on a description of the IMD operational workflow and list of safety hazards that need to be avoided during its operation. Additionally, we use the generated attack trees to quantify the security condition of the IMD instance being analyzed. Both these pieces of information can be provided by the users of IMDs in a care facility. The contributions of this paper are: (1) a methodology for automated generation of attack trees for IMDs using process modeling and hazard analysis, and (2) a demonstration of the viability of the methodology for a specific IMD setup called Patient Controlled Analgesia (PCA- IMD), which is used for delivering pain medication to patients in hospitals

    Internet of Things (IoT): Cybersecurity Risks in Healthcare

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    The rapid growth and investment in the Internet of Things (IoT) has significantly impacted how individuals and industries operate. The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of physical, technology-embedded objects that communicate, detect, and interact with their external environment or internal state (Hung, 2017). According to Tankovska (2020), IoT devices are estimated to reach 21.5 billion units by 2025. This technological boom is leading various industrial sectors to notice a quick increase in cybersecurity risks and threats. One industrial sector has been particularly vulnerable to numerous cyber threats across the globe: healthcare. Oliver Noble (2020), a data encryption specialist at NordLocker, suggests that cybercriminals target healthcare institutions because they store an overwhelming amount of patient information that is private, personal, and unchangeable. Healthcare organizations have a difficult time securing their cybersecurity infrastructure and the reasons for this will be further discussed in this paper

    The Internet of Hackable Things

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    The Internet of Things makes possible to connect each everyday object to the Internet, making computing pervasive like never before. From a security and privacy perspective, this tsunami of connectivity represents a disaster, which makes each object remotely hackable. We claim that, in order to tackle this issue, we need to address a new challenge in security: education

    Managing wireless security risks in medical services

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    Medical systems are designed for a range of end users from different professional skill groups and people who carry the devices in and on their bodies. Open, accurate, and efficient communication is the priority for medical systems and consequently strong protection costs are traded against the utility benefits for open systems. In this paper we assess the vulnerabilities created by the professional and end user expectations, and theorise ways to mitigate wireless security vulnerabilities. The benefits of wireless medical services are great in terms of efficiencies, mobility, and information management. These benefits may be realised by treating the vulnerabilities and reducing the cost of adverse events. The purpose of this paper is to raise and to discuss key issues so that others may be motivated to treat the problems and to better optimise the trade-off for design improvement

    Biomedical Devices and Systems Security

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    Medical devices have been changing in revolutionary ways in recent years. One is in their form-factor. Increasing miniaturization of medical devices has made them wearable, light-weight, and ubiquitous; they are available for continuous care and not restricted to clinical settings. Further, devices are increasingly becoming connected to external entities through both wired and wireless channels. These two developments have tremendous potential to make healthcare accessible to everyone and reduce costs. However, they also provide increased opportunity for technology savvy criminals to exploit them for fun and profit. Consequently, it is essential to consider medical device security issues. In this paper, we focused on the challenges involved in securing networked medical devices. We provide an overview of a generic networked medical device system model, a comprehensive attack and adversary model, and describe some of the challenges present in building security solutions to manage the attacks. Finally, we provide an overview of two areas of research that we believe will be crucial for making medical device system security solutions more viable in the long run: forensic data logging, and building security assurance cases

    RFID systems in medical environment: EMC issues

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    RFID is a promising technology in the healthcare area in order to improve patient safety and increase efficiency and reduce costs in the daily healthcare work. This paper analyzes the available literature regarding both interference of RFID systems in medical equipment and the interferences of medical equipment on RFID systems. The conclusion of this analysis is that is necessary to develop standards in order to protect medical equipment from RFID interferences, and standards to plan the deployment of RFID installations taking into account electromagnetic compatibility issues.Postprint (published version

    IOT Devices in Healthcare: Vulnerabilities, Threats and Mitigations

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    Internet of things has been a dream for many people in the beginning of the internet, today IOT devices are in every sector, healthcare being a major player because of the benefits as quality care for patients and easing the work for providers but on the other hand, it poses security threats to the patients and organizations, it is imperative to point out the best way to balance between the risks and opportunities that IOT creates for the sector; in this research, vulnerabilities and prior studies as well as ways to fix these weaknesses will be presented, it is also worth noting that due to the length of IOT vulnerabilities, the common ones will be discussed
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