data are pests in doctors’ offices and hospitals to become a serious problem. Computer scientists now have an easy-to-use detection system developed.
The health care is now full of computer technology. And these devices are increasingly attacked by pests data. The problem. Often there is no or only poor security software, also missing updates, close the gaps
Researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) now have therefore developed a malware detector, which works quite differently: It detects viruses and worms based on subtle changes in the current consumption of the devices. This will give medical personnel a quick way to identify problematic hardware and to take from the grid. The procedure would be also suitable for industrial computers, which are used for example for power plant control.
The UM system goes by the name WattsUpDoc and based on a work by Kevin Fu, who led the research group “Safety of Medical Devices” on the College directs. WattsUpDoc has already been tested at industrial workstations and a computer-controlled device, be prepared with the drugs in hospitals, the so-called compounding. In both cases, a modified version of Windows running on the machines.The malware detector detects the first normal operating current consumption patterns of the monitored hardware. In the experiment, then the behavior of an intentionally caused malware infection was examined. WattsUpDoc could detect unusual activity in 94 percent of cases, when it was trained on the specific malware. Between 84 and 91 percent recognition rate was previously unknown data pests.
John Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, believes that the new method is an interesting method to monitor medical equipment. The next step, says Fu, are now more field tests. It will probably take a year or longer, is to think up a commercializationultimate goal is a system that automatically alerts administrators of a hospital as soon as there is reason for concern -. Although the exact dates pest never is identified. This is important, because in the meantime hundreds of thousands of medical devices are in use in the U.S. alone that are never touched again after the initial installation. According vulnerabilities contained therein would also not resolved, says Shane Clark, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, who has worked with Fu together to WattsUpDoc. “We are dealing with an acute problem., We can not simply change the design of each of these devices that is being used.” Why would her new ways to improve safety.
Medical equipment such as heart monitors, compounder or database systems for imaging techniques are prone to data pests because they usually depend on the internal network of an institution, which in turn to the Internet connection is available. In June, the U.S. health supervision FDA warned publicly that malware in this area represented a growing problem and device manufacturers to upgrade their software. Although the FDA has no cases in which it by data pests cause serious damage in patients came. In addition, we have fortunately not seen any malware infection that was specifically tailored to medical hardware. But already caused data pest problems. “It is dangerous if you can not do its job because a device resets constantly,” says Clark. standard virus protection systems but did not help. The reason is that while Windows is often on the devices used, but this was changed so that incompatibilities occur at normal security software. Some devices also allow no additional program installation. Thus Fus idea is feasible, lots of signatures have to be collected from medical devices that are guaranteed malware-free. <- AUTHOR MARKER DATA BEGIN -> ( David Talbot ) / (bsc)<- RSPEAK_START -> <- AU! THOR-DATA-END-MARKER ! ->
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