Medical Device Security

Implantable medical devices (IMDs) are miniaturized computer systems used to monitor and treat various medical conditions. Examples of IMDs include insulin pumps, artificial pacemakers, neuro-stimulators, and implantable cardiac defibrillators. These devices have adopted wireless communication to help facilitate the care they provide for patients by allowing easier transferal of data or remote control of machine operations. However, with such adoption has come exposure to various security risks and issues that must be addressed due to the close relation of patient health and IMD performance. With patient lives on the line, these security risks pose increasingly real problems. This chapter hopes to provide an overview of these security risks, their proposed solutions, and the limitations on IMD systems which make solving these issues nontrivial. Later, the chapter will analyze the security issues and the history of vulnerabilities in pacemakers to illustrate the theoretical topics by considering a specific device.