A Security Framework for Mobile Health Applications

Recent trends indicate a steady rise in cyber attacks targeting the healthcare industry and patient data. Security is one of the most vital requirements for any device that utilizes medical data. Mobile applications within healthcare are becoming increasingly popular, and users presume these applications are secure. However, a lack of security cognizance among developers and a rush to market have introduced a plethora of security vulnerabilities in mobile health applications. Our initial research showed that health-related mobile applications contain numerous vulnerabilities for attackers to potentially obtain medical data. In this paper, we propose a security framework for mobile applications in healthcare to address common security vulnerabilities that appear during the application development process. Our goal is to maintain an expected level of user functionality and ensure personal health information is secure when using a mobile application.