Security and Privacy Issues in Medical Internet of Things: Overview, Countermeasures, Challenges and Future Directions

Abstract

The rapid development and the expansion of Internet of Things (IoT)-powered technologies have strengthened the way we live and the quality of our lives in many ways by combining Internet and communication technologies through its ubiquitous nature. As a novel technological paradigm, this IoT is being served in many application domains including healthcare, surveillance, manufacturing, industrial automation, smart homes, the military, etc. Medical Internet of Things (MIoT), or the use of IoT in healthcare, is becoming a booming trend towards improving the health and wellbeing of billions of people by offering smooth and seamless medical facilities and by enhancing the services provided by medical practitioners, nurses, pharmaceutical companies, and other related government and non-government organizations. In recent times, this MIoT has gained higher attention for its potential to alleviate the massive burden on global healthcare, which has been caused by the rise of chronic diseases, the aging population, and emergency situations such as the recent COVID-19 global pandemic, where many government and non-government medical resources were challenged, owing to the rising demand for medical resources. It is evident that with this recent growing demand for MIoT, the associated technologies and its interconnected, heterogeneous nature adds new concerns as it becomes accessible to confidential patient data, often without patient or the medical staff consciousness, as the security and privacy of MIoT devices and technologies are often overlooked and undermined by relevant stakeholders. Hence, the growing security breaches that target the MIoT in healthcare are making the security and privacy of Medical IoT a crucial topic that is worth scrutinizing. In this study, we examined the current state of security and privacy of the MIoT, which has become of utmost concern among many security experts and researchers due to its rapid demand in recent times. Nevertheless, pertaining to the current state of security and privacy, we also examine and discuss a number of attack use cases, countermeasures and solutions, recent challenges, and anticipated future directions where further attention is required through this study.

Privacy Protection of Medical Service Data Based on Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence in the Era of Smart Medical Care

“…As we all know, the training and prediction of neural network need the support of data. However, data always inevitably contains sensitive and confidential information [25]. Therefore, while neural network brings convenience to our life, it also brings hidden dangers of privacy disclosure.…”

A Systematic Literature Review on Cybersecurity Threats to Healthcare Data and Mitigation Strategies

“…Theme/sub-theme Authors Emerging technology trends that contribute to cybersecurity vulnerability in the healthcare sector Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) (Jagadeeswari et al, 2018;Sadek et al, 2022;Sun et al, 2018) Big data (Abouelmehdi et al, 2018 (Jalali, Razak, Gordon, Perakslis, & Madnick, 2019;Meisner, 2018) Inadequate investments in cybersecurity measures (Abouzakhar, Jones, & Angelopoulou, 2017;Meisner, 2018) Cybersecurity countermeasures and mitigation strategies Blockchain technology for security (Attaran, 2020;El-Gazzar & Stendal, 2020;Jennath, Anoop, & Asharaf, 2020;Nagasubramanian et al, 2020;Shah & Khan, 2020;Shi et al, 2020;Siyal et (Bhuyan et al, 2020;Elhoseny et al, 2021;Habib et al, 2019;Shah & Khan, 2020) 3.1 Emerging Technology Trends that Contribute to Cybersecurity Vulnerability in the Healthcare Sector…”

“…Using encryption-decryption algorithms, encryption facilitates secure data communication (Zriqat & Altamimi, 2017). The encryption of health data ensures that in the event of unauthorized access, the data cannot be read without the decryption code (Elhoseny et al, 2021;Zriqat & Altamimi, 2017).…”

“…Hence, healthcare institutions should encourage, and when necessary, enforce the use of strong passwords by employees (Bhuyan et al, 2020;Dias et al, 2021). Some of the password security measures that could be incorporated into a holistic cybersecurity strategy include (Dias et al, 2021;Elhoseny et al, 2021;Jalali & Kaiser, 2018;Nunes et al, 2021):…”

“…Other vital components of a holistic cybersecurity strategy include the management of IT infrastructure (Alodaynan & Alanazi, 2021;Elhoseny et al, 2021), the implementation of an intrusion detection system (Alodaynan & Alanazi, 2021;Elhoseny et al, 2021), and risk management (Abraham et al, 2019;Bhuyan et al, 2020). According to Bhosale et al (2021), one of the reasons why healthcare institutions are vulnerable to cyberattacks is the prevalence of legacy systems.…”