A Survey on Security and Privacy Issues in Modern Healthcare Systems: Attacks and Defenses

Abstract

The recent advancements in computing systems and wireless communications have made healthcare systems more efficient than before. Modern healthcare devices can monitor and manage different health conditions of the patients automatically without any manual intervention from the medical professionals. Additionally, the use of implantable medical devices (IMDs), body area networks (BANs), and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in healthcare systems improve the overall patient monitoring and treatment process. However, these systems are complex in software and hardware, and optimizing between security, privacy, and treatment is crucial for healthcare systems as any security or privacy violation can lead to severe effects on patients' treatments and overall health conditions. Indeed, the healthcare domain is increasingly facing security challenges and threats due to numerous design flaws and the lack of proper security measures in healthcare devices and applications. In this paper, we explore various security and privacy threats to healthcare systems and discuss the consequences of these threats. We present a detailed survey of different potential attacks and discuss their impacts. Furthermore, we review the existing security measures proposed for healthcare systems and discuss their limitations. Finally, we conclude the paper with future research directions toward securing healthcare systems against common vulnerabilities. CCS Concepts: • General and reference → Surveys and overviews; • Security and privacy → Systems security; • Applied computing → Health care information systems.

A Survey on Blockchain for Healthcare: Challenges, Benefits, and Future Directions

“…Communication and data management standard for healthcare devices are necessary, and many international standards are considered as prerequisites for the certification of healthcare devices and communications [68]. However, these standards do not focus on the specific and design requirements especially in security and privacy aspects of the healthcare interactions and required communications.…”

A survey on security issues in modern Implantable Devices: Solutions and future issues

“…Newaz et al extensively reviewed security and privacy of overall healthcare systems including devices, sensors, networks, communication, healthcare providers and also compares attacks and solutions [48]. Hathaliya et al provided an overview of different application areas of healthcare 4.0 and discussed the integration of different technologies by comparing architecture, research questions, open issues, research challenges, security algorithms and taxonomy of recent surveys in healthcare industry [49].…”

“…Before sensors can communicate securely with each other there has to be a trust establishment followed by a data communication which is mostly achieved by a cryptographic key [114]. Newaz et al categorized sensors in healthcare domain as Physiological sensors, biological sensors and Environmental sensors [48]. Sensors collect data and sends the aggregated data to the server.…”

G-IDS: Generative Adversarial Networks Assisted Intrusion Detection System

“…The recent invention of 5G technology can take the internet speed to a whole new level. Although the emerging CPS possess a humongous amount of data, the security and privacy of these complex systems face a significant amount of challenges due to non-homogeneous nature with other known systems and lack of related data and experimentation [11], [12].…”