News broke that hackers can remotely access and manipulate the Medfusion 4000 Wireless Syringe Infusion Pump – raising further concerns around the healthcare IoT. Gordon Morrison, Director of Government Relations at McAfee commented below.
Gordon Morrison, Director of Government Relations at McAfee:
“IT and security professionals in healthcare organisations are facing unprecedented pressure – from an increase in demand and complexity of services, to the threat of legacy IT and a number of new compliance issues like GDPR and the Information governance toolkit. Alongside these challenges, hospitals are going through immense digital transformation, with new connected medical devices being introduced to improve the doctor and patient experience.
However, we’ve seen that despite the massive potential of the healthcare Internet of Things, a number of these devices are vulnerable to hacking – putting both hospital networks and the patients themselves at risk. It is essential to ensure these devices are not introduced at the expense of the safety of the patient and their data. Achieving this will be twofold: ensuring that the devices are built securely by design and with the necessary security controls in place; as well as a security policy for connected devices in hospitals, to ensure that they can’t access sensitive data and are regularly patched against newly-discovered vulnerabilities.”
