Digital healthcare security

Healthcare is an essential part of the national critical infrastructure network. Of the four critical infrastructures (safety, mission, business and security), hospital infrastructures are a mission-critical infrastructure. Damage to network communications and the loss of patient data would have a detrimental impact on the health provision. Additionally, many lifesaving medical devices, used by health care infrastructures, are vulnerable to attacks from the digital domain. Pacemakers for example, are calibrated wirelessly and have none or very little security in place. Medical devices are often limited in their computational and communication capabilities. Such devices are not built to accommodate computationally exhaustive operations. Similarly, most medical devices have low on-device memory, leading to the challenge that they are not able to execute complicated security protocols. Wireless links and open connections, present on medical devices, can also be compromised by attackers. Adversaries can manipulate the data transmitted and received by the device, alter dosages, and even turn devices off, putting patients' lives at risk. However, a notable concern is that a successful attack on such device, presents an opportunity for an attacker to gain backdoor access into a healthcare infrastructure. This essentially allows attackers to bypass the network authentication infrastructure required to access systems containing sensitive personal data. In this talk Prof. Abdennour El Rhalibi will present challenges and solutions in digital healthcare security techniques relying on machine learning, visualisation techniques and IDS.