MEDIotWALL: Securing Smart Healthcare Environments Through IoT Firewalls

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Information Security

Background:

• The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) integrates IoT in healthcare, improving patient care and reducing costs.
• Existing IoMT security solutions are often proprietary, lack transparency, and fail to meet clinical regulations.
• Critical security challenges in IoMT can jeopardize patient safety.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce MEDIotWALL, a customized two-tier security architecture for healthcare environments.
• To address the limitations of current IoMT security solutions regarding transparency, scalability, and regulatory compliance.
• To enhance the security framework for IoMT to ensure patient safety and data integrity.

Main Methods:

• Developed a customized two-tier security architecture, MEDIotWALL.
• Integrated distributed real-time traffic monitoring.
• Implemented AI-driven rule generation for a centralized, human-supervised, and regulation-aware security framework.

Main Results:

• MEDIotWALL demonstrated cost-efficiency and effectiveness in experimental results.
• The system ensures robust medical protection.
• Authentication, confidentiality, and integrity of the IoMT environment were preserved.

Conclusions:

• MEDIotWALL offers a non-intrusive and regulation-aware security solution for IoMT.
• The proposed architecture effectively balances enhanced patient care with critical security needs.
• This approach strengthens the security posture of healthcare environments utilizing IoMT technologies.