Medical Device Security: Hack or Hype?

March 17, 2016 (at 1:30 p.m.) in Embedded

How has the field of medical device security evolved since the 2008 hack of a implantable medical device? Why do I still maintain hope that medical device security will improve? What’s fiction and what’s a clinically relevant risk? I will discuss the subtle differences in philosophy between information security specialists and clinical engineers who must ensure the safety of patients depending on the function of medical devices. By the end of the talk, an information security specialist will have a better understanding of how to work productively with clinical engineering, and more important, how to share a beer with a safety-minded clinical engineer.

Kevin Fu

Dr. Kevin Fu is credited for establishing the field of medical device security. Kevin is Chief Scientist of Virta Labs, Inc. and Associate Professor in EECS at the University of Michigan where he directs the Archimedes Center for Medical Device Security and the Security and Privacy Research Group (SPQR) at secure-medicine.org.

Kevin has briefed White House staff on methods to improve medical device security. He was named MIT Technology Review TR35 Innovator of the Year. Kevin served as program chair of USENIX Security, a member of the NIST Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, and co-chair of the AAMI Working Group on Medical Device Security. He served as a visiting scientist at the Food & Drug Administration, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Harvard Medical School, Microsoft Research, and MIT CSAIL. Kevin received his B.S., M.Eng., and Ph.D. from MIT. He earned a certificate of artisanal bread making from the French Culinary Institute. Follow Kevin @DrKevinFu.