The U.S. FDA has endorsed a software bill of materials (SBOM)—an electronic list of the components in a piece of software—as a way to combat the growing threat of cyberattacks. But will it really impact medical device security? Healthcare Dive investigates.
The SBOM got a major boost with President Joe Biden’s executive order aimed at bolstering the nation’s cybersecurity posture by, among other actions, enhancing software supply chain security.
Momentum from that order combined with a multi-stakeholder initiative headed by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, designed to improve software component transparency across several industries including medtech, may have created an inflection point for SBOM.
It’s critical medical device manufacturers provide SBOMs to “better understand exposure to risk of both known and future vulnerabilities in third-party software in legacy devices,” Kevin Fu, acting director of device cybersecurity at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, told MedTech Dive in June.
Read the full article on Healthcare Dive.
