If you had to name a safe pair of hands, healthcare and medical practitioners would probably rank at the top. However, the medical technology (MedTech) they use is in a vulnerable state. Recent years have proven this extensively, with an unprecedented number of cyberattacks targeting critical medical equipment in hospitals. Here, Neil Oliver, technical marketing manager at professional battery manufacturer Accutronics, explains what this means for MedTech manufacturers.
Every year in Louisville, Kentucky, hackers and security experts gather for DerbyCon. While a get-together of hackers may sound troubling on its own, what’s truly disturbing is what came out of last year’s conference. Medical cyber crime is on the rise, and there are thousands of critical medical devices which can currently be located online and hacked directly.
Researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA, recently developed a small piece of hardware that enables medical devices to securely connect to WiFi networks. Due to its wand-like appearance, the system has been dubbed the magic wand of MedTech.
Unfortunately, there is little that is magical about the device. While it does address the problem the medical technology (MedTech) and healthcare sectors are facing in regards to cybercrime, there is much more that needs to be done to secure medical hardware.
Security experts billed 2015 as the ‘year of the healthcare hack’, with increasing numbers of medical systems attacked by cyber criminals targeting valuable personal data. While cybersecurity is commonly associated with software attacks, the healthcare sector is finding that the hardware it’s employing to improve patient care is creating backdoors.
