How to assess the security of hospital IoT

“We’ve seen infusion pumps infected with malware – while connected to patients,” says Joe Lea, vice president of product safety at Armis Security.

That sentence should give chills to hospital leaders of any stripe – whether security or IT staff, clinicians or patient safety officers.

More and medical devices and machines – from smartpumps to MRIs to implantable sensors - are linked up to the ever-expanding internet of things. And IoT’s connection to the web leaves those technologies vulnerable to attack, putting patients at risk and the bottom line of healthcare organizations under threat.

Lea and his colleague, Armis Security CMO Michael Parker, recently spoke with Healthcare IT News about about some of the ways IoT devices are left open to attack, and offered some advice on how health systems can help manage the threats.