Consumers increasingly expect their electronic «things» to be connected to smart phones, tablets and the Internet. When that thing happens to be a medical device, the risks and benefits of connectivity must be carefully weighed. Once the decision is made that connecting the device is beneficial, medical device manufacturers must design their products to maintain patient safety and prevent compromised personal health information in the face of cybersecurity threats.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Clark Fortney, Software Engineer at Battelle, discussed how designing safe connected medical devices begins with systematically analyzing cyber threats against desired functionality and making smart hardware/software architectural choices accordingly. Memory protection strategies, functional isolation, runtime checks, programming oversight, and vulnerability assessment testing are some of the key methods to increase the cybersecurity of a medical device, or any connected device that performs important functions.