How to Secure IoT in Long Term Healthcare

Controlling IoT access necessitates the command of both the devices and the humans who connect to them. It is critical to understand the role of each before deciding on the type of access to grant to a person or an IoT device.

Fremont, CA: Without a doubt, IoT technology is having a significant impact on the healthcare industry. According to recent studies,70 percent of all best-selling wearables are dedicated to the health and wellness industry, with experts predicting that 40 percent of all IoT-powered devices will be utilized in healthcare by 2026.IoT devices provide exceptional benefits for improving operational efficiency, patient outcomes, and cost savings in healthcare settings.

Unfortunately, many IoT devices introduce fundamental security risks that pose significant risks to entire long-term care facilities.Hackers are now targeting nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and their residents by exploiting vulnerabilities in any type of connected device.

How to Secure IoT Devices in Long-Term Healthcare Care

Determining the Role of Users, Devices, and Things

Controlling IoT access necessitates the command of both the devices and the humans who connect to them. It is critical to understand the role of each before deciding on the type of access to grant to a person or an IoT device. Before granting network access, it is good to find out why a person or device is requesting it. Determining user roles is especially important in long-term care settings because the majority of health care IT professionals are hired from outside the field.

Incorporating Real-Time Intelligence to Find out Subtle Changes

Cyber threats are constantly evolving, and actors will always try to infiltrate one's network, no matter how secure the infrastructure is. As a result, one must incorporate some of the most advanced defences, such as sophisticated analytics and AI-based machine learning solutions that detect subtle changes in user or device behaviour that would otherwise go undetected. Such behaviours frequently indicate that an actor has breached a network's perimeter defences.

Setting Policies on Network Access

Understanding what is running on the network that supports IoT infrastructure is the first step in securing it. It is not only your IT team that connects devices via wireless systems in a long-term care facility environment. In essence, every employee with functional IT knowledge will connect various devices to the IoT network, increasing vulnerabilities.

Consider leveraging modern Network Access Control (NAC) solutions to achieve granular and centralized, role-based management and network segmentation to reduce the risk of breaches. This type of solution assists one in establishing policies regarding which devices and things should have access to the network and which should not.

A perfect NAC solution monitors network connections 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to quarantine any device that is not permitted to connect to the network. When a prohibited device attempts to access a network, the solution sends an alert to the IT team for corrective action. With such an alert feature, the IT team can determine whether a quarantine alert is the result of a biomedical technician attempting to connect a new patient device or a suspicious activity that requires further investigation.