Survey: Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities, Attacks and Solutions in the Medical Domain

Abstract

Recently, an increasing number of cyber-attacks in the medical field has resulted in great losses in the health care industry, since medical information plays an essential role in human health. To introduce a comprehensive survey about possible cyber-attacks and solutions for these attacks, our paper first presents a brief overview of the necessary background of the dataflow in the medical domain and then identifies the vulnerabilities in each stage of the dataflow. Then, according to the weaknesses identified in the medical system, a classification of cyber-attacks is presented. Additionally, the paper presents research on previous work that focuses on solving these cyber-attacks and identifies the strengths and limitations of the solutions for each attack. More importantly, for data storage assurance, our paper discusses several cybersecurity architectures for the medical domain from the existing literature. The countermeasures from previous papers and architectures that are still weak in terms of resource depletion, attack reduction, applicability, etc. are addressed. Finally, the paper discusses and recommends solutions for future work to decrease cyber-attacks in the medical field so that human health can be guaranteed.