The Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center issued an alert Sept. 8 warning about the security risks associated with AI, 5G networks, nanomedicine, smart hospitals and quantum computing.
In addition the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a notice outlining the security and patient safety risks associated with unpatched and legacy medical devices. The FBI has observed a recent uptick in medical device vulnerabilities. If exploited, threat actors can leverage outdated software and poor security features within medical devices to execute cyberattacks.
See the Cybersecurity powerpoint here https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/emerging-technology-security-hph.pdf
5G in Healthcare: Security Concerns
• In many ways, security threats for 5G-enabled healthcare technologies overlap with IoT threats:
Need to secure medical devices as they connect to the network (authentication)
Need to secure data as it is transmitted to/from medical devices (end-to-end encryption)
Need to secure data on device (whole disk encryption or similar procedure)
• IoMT software/firmware development should include both trustworthiness and resilience
Trustworthiness may require the use of authentication and encryption technology
Resilience may require fallback to a safe mode in the case of a cyberattack
Software design and update practices should be transparent
• The design and implementation of the software in medical devices should include a specification of cybersecurity features and validation of those features, as well as a Cybersecurity Bill of Materials (“CBOM”)
• Regularly employ static and/or dynamic vulnerability testing of the software on 5G devices
• Regularly update software on 5G devices in a secure manner • It will be absolutely critical to segment and monitor 5G networks
In regard to artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology, Internet of Things (IoT) technology (see 1, 2, 3), and wireless “Smart” medical devices, serious and sometimes life-threatening problems have been identified with them for years as well.
5G opposition has limited, slowed, and/or stopped deployment in some locations (see 1, 2) including near some U.S. airports due to aviation interference risks (see 1, 2, 3). Nevertheless, deployment and activation continues worldwide on a massive scale despite scary-as-hell research that also continues to be published about it (see 1, 2).