BME Seminar Series: Cybersecurity Challenges in Wearable Medical Devices

Wearable medical devices (WMD) in personal health monitoring applications can be victim of cybersecurity attacks. There are multiple concerns for WMD designs:

• Security and Robustness: The WMD platform should be ready to deal with as many threats as possible, and in case of breach, it should be able to function when some of its components are down 
• Safety: Any action taken by the WMD should never endanger the patient, which includes safe commands, proper malfunction/anomaly responses, and an alarm system for emergency situations
• Usability: Design objectives should balance the operational simplicity (less chance of failure) against the added complexity of a more secure environment (protection from attacks and data leaks)

This talk will discuss the evolution of security standards and how enhanced security protocols can be integrated into WMDs. As a case study, secure and safe operation of a mobile artificial pancreas system with enhanced security protocols will be presented.

Bio

Erdal Oruklu received his B.S. degree in electronics and communications engineering from Technical University of Istanbul in 1995, his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Bogazici University in Istanbul in 1999, and his Ph. D. in computer engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2005. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in 2006, where he is now associate chair, associate professor, and the director of VLSI and SoC Design Research Laboratory. Oruklu’s research interests are reconfigurable computing, advanced computer architectures, hardware/software co-design, embedded systems, and secure hardware design. Oruklu is a technical program committee member and group chair (Sensors, NDE and Industrial Applications Group) for the IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium. Oruklu also serves as an associate editor for the IEEE Open Journal of Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society.