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Enhancing medical device security

Front view of doctor touching medical device icons on screen
Medical devices have shifted towards connectivity in today's evolving technology landscape. This facilitates enhanced patient care and streamlined healthcare processes but brings new security challenges. Regulatory bodies, like the FDA, play a crucial role in enforcing security requirements. Our white paper focuses on the FDA's guidelines, exploring key considerations for meeting cybersecurity recommendations in software development and maintenance. Gain insights into vulnerabilities, prevention, mitigation and post-release actions related to cybersecurity for medical devices.

Methods to securing medical devices

To protect your medical devices from vulnerabilities, it's crucial to eliminate known vulnerabilities and anticipate unauthorized access attempts. While flaws in open-source modules are beyond your control, you can mitigate potential issues in your own applications. Common coding errors like NULL pointer de-references and freeing already freed memory are often exploited by hackers. Employing techniques such as static and dynamic analysis and using a coding standard can significantly improve security.

The importance of product maintenance

Product maintenance is a crucial aspect to consider in the ever-changing security landscape. Planning for updates during the development phase is important to ensure safe and secure updates when issues inevitably arise. These issues can include product upgrades, resolving functionality issues or addressing newly discovered exploits.

Establishing a regular update frequency for released products is essential. Regular updates allow for scheduled and minimal device downtime. Considering that many devices are mission-critical for customers, finding the right balance between update frequency and downtime is a business decision that needs to occur more frequently than "never".

Testing products for unknown vulnerabilities

Securing medical devices involves protecting them from vulnerabilities that were unknown at the time of product release. To proactively address this, you can employ techniques used by hackers before your product goes to market. Two major methods for this are:

Penetration testing: This involves simulating cybersecurity attacks to identify vulnerabilities in devices before release. By allowing engineers or "white hat hacker" consultants to exploit the devices, preventive measures can be taken to enhance security.

Fuzz testing: This involves probing a device with a large amount of valid and invalid Ethernet packets to observe its response, making it an easier alternative to penetration testing for product testing.

Overcoming challenges in medical device security

Download the white paper and learn how to overcome challenges in the design, development, and maintenance of medical devices. By following the guidance, your device will:

  • Be more difficult to exploit successfully

  • Be protected against both known and unknown exploits upon release

  • Facilitate faster updates to address newly discovered vulnerabilities

  • Provide enhanced security, instilling customer confidence even in the event of issues

Read the white paper today.

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