Discussion
Network technologies are predominantly used by the different industries in today’s world in order to securely store and transmit their data in a secure network. They make use of different network devices like the router, firewalls, different ports and switches in order to form the network. These are either wired, non-wired or mobile networks. Recently the healthcare industry has started implementing network technologies to improve security features within the industry as well as to make operations faster and easier. Security is one of the prime aspects within the healthcare industry because of the importance of the patient’s medical health records and confidential information for the doctors. Hence, it is one of the most successful applications of the network technologies.
This report will highlight the importance of network technologies in the healthcare industry and what is its future in this industry. The advantages and disadvantages including its threats in the healthcare industry will also be discussed. By the end of the report the reader will able to understand the different aspects of implementing network technologies in the healthcare industry and the possible options of eliminating the threats associated to it.
In the healthcare industry, there are doctors, nurses, patient and other professionals who are involved in the different sectors. For instance in a hospital there are people from different spheres who are working together at the same time. There are different kinds of information that the doctor’s need, which in turn can also be, needed by the nurses for ta king care of the patients. There are also administrative tasks within a hospital, which again also needs data to be stored or transmitted within the hospital. All these operations related to secure data storage and transmission within the network of employees within the hospital needs a secure computerized network, which is generally handled by a dedicated admin [1]. This secure network architecture is made using certain specialized components of a secure network namely: routers, firewalls, switches as well as servers.
- Routers: They are specialized network devices that transmit data packets from a particular network to another, for example from the billing department within the hospital to the medical department, which are accessed by doctors and nurses.
- Firewalls: They act as protection shields that prevent the computers from being hacked and protects the computers from malicious phishing attacks. Security is of utmost important in the healthcare industry since they store critical and confidential information about the particular hospital, medical records of patients as well as personal details of doctors and nurses [3].
- Switches: Switches are used to channelize the data coming from multiple input ports to the desired output port, which can then be redirected to the intended destination. For example, data coming from the doctors in the medical department of a hospital is not supposed to reach the network of the parking lot in the hospital, which stores information on visitor’s car parking and related information. This is where switches play an important role in channelizing the data.
- Servers: Servers are the centralized computers/programs that manages the rest of the computers (hosts) in a particular network and sends or receives data packets from them. They manage the access to the different resources, which are centralized.
In recent times, network technologies have made a great impact in the healthcare industry. One such important network technology is known as Internet of things (IOT) which is one of the most widely used network technologies in the healthcare industry [10]. Recently, an article stated that one of the hospitals in Boston has started using internet of medical things, which protects the newborns. It also allow the nurses to receive instant updates whenever the vital signs of the NICA patients change. Hospitals have also started using the internet of things to optimize workflow of medical surgeries and alert families once the surgeries are over, in order to boost their moral spirits thereby, improving patient satisfaction. Doctors are also now making use of IOT to gather complete medical history of patients thereby saving a lot of time and making tasks smoother.
Earlier it has been found that different reports have been written and researches carried out in the past to identify the applications and threats associated to networks in the healthcare industry. However not much of an information is available regarding the techniques to mitigate the threats or what exactly network technologies in the healthcare industry mean. All these aspects will be covered in this report.
Healthcare Network Architecture
One of the techniques used by network engineers is known as network address translation (NAT) in which is a technique of remapping a particular IP address space into another, by modification of information on network address during data transmission through a router [2]. It cats as firewall, which can block unwanted websites from opening up in browser. NAT can also be implemented as an antivirus programme in the computer.
It is of utmost importance that the healthcare networks are secure since they contain different kinds of confidential and private data. They can be personal information of the doctors, nurses, patients, and financial as well as legal documents pertaining to the hospital. Often the networks also store important medical documents and journals, which are copyrights, should not be accessible to the outside world, and should be limited only to the hospital administration. Leakage of such data can also pose great threats for the healthcare institutions and cause the industry to be victims of ethically answerable questions at times. Different devices used in the healthcare industry like the MRI scanners, microscopes and ventilators are mostly computers that store important data, which are easily accessible by hackers, therefore vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which in turn can cause medical reports and other important information to be manipulated.
- Data getting lost or stolen: In a recent research, it has been found that nearly 46% of the healthcare incidents related to security are due to loss and theft. The main reason for this being most of the times the employees in the hospitals are not much careful about their personal devices like laptops, cell phones, or even workstations that consist of critical important information about the patients. The sensitive devices are also not encrypted so that in case of any hacks or hijacks, the patient and hospital data remain unaffected. This is a major issue in the healthcare networks today.
- Misuse by insiders: This is yet another concern in the security of the healthcare networks. In the year 2013 around 15% of security related incidents occurred because of insider misuse in the healthcare industry in the United States. In a recent study, it was reported that in in the healthcare industry many outsiders are often solely recruited in hospitals just to steal patient information to commit tax frauds and identity thefts.
- Unintentional actions: Some unintentional human actions can also cause security issues in healthcare networks. For example, a hospital stuff in the billing counter accidentally puts a patient’s information in the envelope of another patient at the time of doing mass mailing. Improper and poor maintenance of the hospitals website can also leak patient information to the outside world, which can be available online. In addition, medical institutions has decommissioned the usage of computers without properly removing the earlier patient’s information causing data breach .
In order to reduce or stop misuse of resources by internal employees, an audit trail should be created in each of the computers and other network devices within the healthcare hospital. This will keep a track of all the employees who have accessed the critical information on the different systems including the servers. Healthcare institutions should be knowing who accessed what information and when was it accessed. In addition, data exfiltration should be kept under a watch. Products that prevent data loss should be made mandatory in the healthcare industry in case the patient’s data needs to be carried outside the hospital premises .
Conclusion:
From the above report, it can be concluded that in spite of its advantages, healthcare networks need a lot of development in order to mitigate the threats associated to it. Although it eases the tasks of the ID admins within the healthcare institutions, there are different threats, which should be taken care at the same time. Patient data as well as the sensitive data within the healthcare institutions should be stored in encrypted format so that there is no threat of data theft, and there is no questions of ethical issues that the hospitals have to face.
References:
An IoT-Aware Architecture for Smart Healthcare Systems, 2nd ed. IEEE, 2015, pp. 515-526.
Network address translation. United States, 2018.
VMPlanner: Optimizing virtual machine placement and traffic flow routing to reduce network power costs in cloud data centers, 1st ed. 2018, pp. 179-196.
Wireless sensor networks: a survey on recent developments and potential synergies, 68th ed. 2018, pp. 1-48. Internet of everything (IoE) exploiting organisational inside threats: Global network of smart devices (GNSD). IEEE, 2015.
Security and privacy for mobile healthcare networks: from a quality of protection perspective. IEEE, 2018, pp. 104-112.
A Secure IoT-Based Healthcare System With Body Sensor Networks, 4th ed. 2018, pp. 10288 – 10299.
“Survey of main challenges (security and privacy) in wireless body area networks for healthcare applications”, Egyptian Informatics Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 113-122, 2018.
SoK: Security and Privacy in Implantable Medical Devices and Body Area Networks 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. Berkeley, CA, USA: IEEE, 2018, pp. 524-539.
Mitigating vulnerabilities and threats for patient-centric healthcare systems in low income developing countries. IEEE, 2014.
Internet of everything (IoE) exploiting organisational inside threats: Global network of smart devices (GNSD). IEEE, 2015.
Interactive and Iterative Behavioral Model, System, and Method for Detecting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse. 2018.
Method and apparatus for supporting communications between a computing device within a network and an external computing device. 2018.
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