Medical device cybersecurity has been a hotly debated topic since the rise of connected devices. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only complicated the issue, security experts say.
There is just about unanimous agreement that the benefits of those devices outweigh the risks. Even security experts who directly depend on them say so.
Jay Radcliffe, a medical device security expert and Type 1 diabetic, famously declared more than six years ago at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas that the benefits of connected medical devices vastly outweigh the risks. He told CNBC much the same thing a couple of years later after he hacked into his own Johnson & Johnson insulin infusion pump.
He acknowledged that malicious hacks are possible and could cause catastrophic damage to users, but said for the average person like himself, it would be much more likely for “an attacker to sneak up behind me and deliver a fatal blow to my head with a baseball bat.” Still, there’s also general agreement that medical device security ought to be better—a lot better. And some Synopsys experts say the COVID-19 pandemic, bad as it is, isn’t a valid reason to put security on hold.
Read the full article on Synopsis’ Software Integrity Blog.
