Securing Healthcare For The Internet of Things
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
New technology addresses healthcare’s unprecedented security breaches.
As a growing number of connected medical devices are deployed throughout healthcare facilities, potential security vulnerabilities that can allow hackers to gain unauthorized access to highly sensitive information or worse are created. While the Internet of Things holds great promise to improve our health and wellbeing through the use of Internet-connected infusion pumps, imaging machines, blood-glucose sensors, and other devices that can automatically share valuable data to a person’s electronic health record, it also presents great management and security challenges that must be addressed proactively.
Cyber attacks and data breaches continue to dominate the headlines as they expose vulnerabilities across verticals. Healthcare providers hold some of the world’s most sensitive information — medical records — making them a particularly high-value target.
One way to help secure data and capitalize on the promise of the Internet of Things is through network management, and Avaya has introduced new technology that addresses healthcare’s unprecedented security breaches. SDN Fx Healthcare is the first smart solution to connect, manage, and help secure medical devices so that healthcare can reduce its rank as the industry with the highest number of security breaches.
A 2015 report indicated more than 34 percent of healthcare records have already been breached, the highest figure of any industry according to Healthcare Informatics, with more than 111 million records affected in the top 10 healthcare breaches alone. And analysts at IDC Health Insights project one in three patients will be the victim of a healthcare data breach in 2016.
As the Internet of Things for healthcare takes hold, the massive proliferation of medical devices that generate critical, sensitive information to care teams represent potential vulnerabilities that can allow hackers to gain unauthorized access to highly sensitive information — even through systems seemingly unrelated to healthcare technologies such as HVAC and PCI systems. Traditional networking infrastructures struggle to implement network segmentation as a foundational security measure.
“The pace of advancements in medical device technologies is at an all-time high, but unfortunately, so is the increase in security breaches, despite very conscious efforts on the part of the industry to close potential gaps. What happens in many cases is that healthcare organizations may hold back on attaching these technologies to their network where they can be accessed by authorized medical staff and IT personnel — which delays possible improvements in patient care and operations,” said Liam Kiely, vice president, Avaya Networking.
“Securing thousands of devices in an Internet of Things model must be multidimensional and easy to manage. A proper solution should, at the minimum, include traffic segmentation, automatic device onboarding and mobility, automated inventory management, and flow control. Integrating Software-Defined Networking at the network edge seems to be the leading architecture to meet the multi-dimensional criteria,” said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst of ZK Research.
Avaya’s new technology was unveiled at the 2016 HIMSS.