Cybersecurity in the medical device world has evolved from a footnote to a front-page headline. These concerns are a direct result of an increasingly interconnected medical device ecosystem.

Where medical devices were by-and-large standalone systems in the past, today’s medical devices from the-clinx.com regularly communicate with other hospital/clinical systems, PCs, and mobile devices. The following are some common potential threats and design tips to help mitigate them.

Common Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities

There are a few common areas of vulnerability that one must always consider when designing medical devices. The first fundamental aspect of designing a secure system is communication authentication. 

A number of high-profile breaches in the past several years have made it clear that usernames and passwords do not provide sufficient security against malicious attacks. Medical devices are not immune to this trend. 

The second line of defense known as “two-factor authentication” can be used to help mitigate threats associated with weak passwords and may include hardware authentication and biometric scanners. 

Is your product secure?

Often, healthcare facilities will secure access to a network but forego security measures such as data encryption. 

This is like locking the front door but leaving the valuables inside unprotected. To fully protect patients, data must be secure at rest in a device, in transit over a network, and physically in space. Encrypting data both in transit and at rest protects against an unauthorized user who gains access to a network. 

Physically securing the device prevents an attacker from bypassing all security measures by simply stealing the data and attempting to decrypt it elsewhere. A multi-layered approach is vital to effective cybersecurity for your system and supply chain.