Architecture of Health Care Network
The computer network or the data network is the digitalized telecommunication network that enables the nodes for the purpose of sharing various resources. The computer devices eventually exchange the confidential data or information with one another with the help of data links within the nodes [9]. The data links could be established with cable media like optical cables or wires and even wireless media like wireless fidelity. The significant utilization of the network technology is growing rapidly within the health care sector. This health care is subsequently considered as the emerging application of several network based applications [2]. The various networks could provide efficient as well as effective solutions for numerous factors like accessing EMRs or electronic medical records, biomedical information, online claims submission, medical management system, patient accounting, materials management, admitting information and many others [3]. The health care networks are extremely important and vital for the entire sector of health care. The following report outlines a brief description on the several security challenges in emerging networks in health care sector. The architecture of this network, current developments and the importance of security will be provided here.
The health care sector comprises of the organizations, which provide significant medical services and medical insurances, manufacture medical drugs or equipment and facilitate provision of the health care to their patients [12]. This health care sector comprises of the diverse array of several industries and also with the activities that range either from research to manufacturers or to the facilities management. The makers of medical equipment eventually range from the firms, which manufacture standard as well as familiar products like forceps, gloves, scalpels and bandages. The patients or the health care experts are benefitted from this particular sector. The network of this health care is responsible for providing several benefits to these patients of health experts [7]. The entire architecture of the health care network depicts a clear understanding of the routers, switches, servers, clients, gateways and firewalls.
The above figure depicts a clear image of the server farm, clients, gateway and OAM server. These are the major components of this network architecture. The architecture is completely on the basis of the major concepts of SONA or service oriented network architecture [3]. These concepts are sub divided into three structural components, which client level, infrastructure level and finally server farm level. The designing of advanced network capability is done within the infrastructure.
Recent Developments in Health Care Networks
Health care networks are bringing recent developments for the users worldwide. Various development programs are being implemented especially in the rural areas [8]. The major purpose of these developments is to assist within the proper development of the integrated health care network. These health care networks could be the most efficient and effective strategies for achieving the efficiency as well as economies of scale. The main goal is to increase the communications and hence mitigating the recent issues of communication. Moreover, the information is often vulnerable and hence could be easily hacked by the hackers [1]. The recent developments of these networks will ensure that the confidential data or information is not lost under any circumstance.
Security is one of the major requirements in health care networks. The security of network is the proper protection of the access, destruction, misuse and finally hacking of the directories or files within the computerized network system [5]. Some of the major threats to this network are viruses, spyware, adware, worms or identity theft. The importance of this security within the health care network is that it would detect as well as prevent the entry of viruses or other threats. Moreover certain security measures like encryption encode or hide the confidential data into a cipher text, so that the hacker does not get access of it [10]. As the health care networks store sensitive data such as patients’ details, there is a major importance of the security in networks.
There are various potential and vulnerable issues related to security within the health care networks. Amongst them, the three potential security issues in these networks are as follows:
- i) Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: The first and the foremost security issue that is dangerous for the health care network is the distributed denial of service or DDoS attack [4]. In the denial of service attack, the attacker seeks into the network resource or machine with the major purpose of making that particular machine completely unavailable for the intended and authorized users. This is done by the permanent or temporary disruption of services for any typical host that is linked with the Internet connection. This type of attack could be eventually achieved by flooding the targeted resource or machine with various superfluous requests with the core attempt of overloading the systems and then preventing the legitimate persons from accessing confidential data or information [6]. Within the distributed denial of service attack, the respective incoming traffic is flooded by the attacker so that the victim does not get data from sources.
- ii) Man in the Middle Attacks: The second popular and significant security issue for the health care network is the man-in-the-middle attack [1]. This is the type of attack, in which the hacker secretly relays or even alters the confidential data within the two parties, who have the belief that they are communicating directly with one another. The most significant example of this man in the middle attack is eavesdropping. The attacker is responsible for making independent links with victims and then relays the messages within them for making those victims believe that they are communicating privately, whereas; the entire conversation is being controlled or managed by that particular attacker [11]. This attacker should have the core ability for intercepting every sensitive message that is passing within the victims and then inject the newer ones. For example, the attacker in the reception range of the unencrypted WAPs like wireless fidelity can easily insert himself as the man-in-the-middle. Since, the attack has the aim to circumvent the mutual authentications; the respective man-in-the-middle attack could eventually succeed when the hacker would be impersonating every end point to the satisfaction at the legal ends [5].
iii) Network Manipulation: The third and the final potential security issue within the health care networks is the network manipulation. This is the type of media or network resource manipulation within the Internet connection [3]. This type of attacks are usually conducted to either get access of the confidential data or information, or to destruct the information systems of any organization, or for trolling purpose, or even for discreditation. For the core purpose of accomplishing all of these objectives, the respective online influencers, software professionals or the hired professionals utilize the Internet bots like click bots, vote bots as well as social bots [7]. Cognitive hacking is done after the successful implementation of network manipulation. In this type of cyber attack, the major aim is to alter the perceptions as well as corresponding behaviours.
Importance of Security in Health Care Network
These above mentioned three potential attacks are highly dangerous for the networks of healthcare and these should be resolved accordingly.
Amongst the three above mentioned security issues, DDoS attack could be mitigated by various techniques [4]. The three mitigation techniques for this particular security issues are as follows:
- i) Mitigation Technique for Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: The DDoS mitigation is the set of few tools and techniques that help in resisting as well as mitigating the major impact of this distributed denial of service or DDoS attack on the health care network [2]. This is attached to the connection of Internet by simply protecting the relay networks or target networks. The traffic is being identified for separating the human traffic from the human like bots and the hijacked web browser [8]. This procedure is completed after comparison of signatures and then testing different traffic attributes like cookie variations, Javascript footprints, HTTP headers and IP addresses. The distributed denial of service attacks is extremely dangerous and threatening for all users. The second best method to mitigate this issue is by employing encryption. The data is encrypted into a hidden text and only the sender and receiver have the access to that data. The next technique for mitigating this attack is by verifying the SSL setups [6]. This would detect the attacker easily. Moreover, the proper management of enterprise wide certificates could also prevent this type of attacks.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above report, it can be concluded that computer network in the health care sector is highly required for getting better solutions and data access to the health experts and patients. The health care sector is responsible for providing various solutions like imaging, online claim submission, patient accounting, access to the electronic medical records and various others. For the presence of these solutions, they are becoming advanced in every passing day. The health care providers are adopting the new technologies to obtain more effectiveness and efficiency within the sector. However, in spite of having these advantages and solutions, these networks are vulnerable to various types of security issues or challenges. The hackers or attackers could easily hack the data. The above report has properly explained the concept of health care networks. The architecture of this network and the recent development of health care networks are provided here. Moreover, the three potential security issues for health care networks with the mitigation techniques for one of them are also given in this report.
References
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[3] Younis, Mohamed, Izzet F. Senturk, Kemal Akkaya, Sookyoung Lee, and Fatih Senel. “Topology management techniques for tolerating node failures in wireless sensor networks: A survey.” Computer Networks 58 (2014): 254-283.
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[6] Rangan, Sundeep, Theodore S. Rappaport, and Elza Erkip. “Millimeter-wave cellular wireless networks: Potentials and challenges.” Proceedings of the IEEE 102, no. 3 (2014): 366-385.
[7] Donoso, Yezid, and Ramon Fabregat. Multi-objective optimization in computer networks using metaheuristics. Auerbach Publications, 2016.
[8] Pathan, Al-Sakib Khan, ed. Security of self-organizing networks: MANET, WSN, WMN, VANET. CRC press, 2016.
[9] Kahate, Atul. Cryptography and network security. Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2013.
[10] Perlman, Radia, Charlie Kaufman, and Mike Speciner. Network security: private communication in a public world. Pearson Education India, 2016.
[11] Anwar, Raja Waseem, Majid Bakhtiari, Anazida Zainal, Abdul Hanan Abdullah, Kashif Naseer Qureshi, F. Computing, and J. Bahru. “Security issues and attacks in wireless sensor network.” World Applied Sciences Journal 30, no. 10 (2014): 1224-1227.
[12] Manshaei, Mohammad Hossein, Quanyan Zhu, Tansu Alpcan, Tamer Bac?ar, and Jean-Pierre Hubaux. “Game theory meets network security and privacy.” ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 45, no. 3 (2013): 25.
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