An Insidious Threat: Medical Devices As Hacking Portal

At a recent industry-government workshop hosted by the FDA, participants agreed that medical devices could become targets for hackers and that industry should cooperate on security issues. One unnamed hospital official said that manufacturers are aware of vulnerabilities but have not made it a priority to fix them. Why would someone want to hack a medical device? It’s not a science fiction scenario, but just standard theft of information-for-sale: It would be a way to access a healthcare organization’s EHR (electronic health records) system, said a Department of Health and Human Services official. Electronic health records typically contain even more – and more kinds of – information than the old paper charts.