Device Security Assessment of Internet of Healthcare Things

Security of the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) devices plays a vital role in e-healthcare today and there has been a rapid increase in the use of networked devices of IoHT in the present healthcare services. However, these networked devices are also highly vulnerable to attackers who constantly target the security of devices and their components to gain access to the patients' data. Infringement of patients' data is not only a violation of privacy but can also jeo-pardize patients' health if the health records are tampered with. Once the device has been intruded upon, attackers can not only change the record of the patients but also block and switch off the device. Decidedly, the security of IoHT devices is at a huge risk and needs to be designed, manufactured and networked with more secure mechanisms. In this league, the present study employs a new methodology to assess the privacy and security of the IoHT devices. The study analyses the security defects of the medical devices by enlisting the opinions of the hacking experts. Based on the collated list of defects cited by the experts, the authors have designed a list of criteria and represented the defects in hierarchical format for assessing the security defects in the devices. Thereafter, the Technical for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method has been used for ranking the security of IoHT devices, based on their security features. The findings of the study iterate that the proposed mechanism would be an efficacious approach for evaluating the security of the medical devices.