Medical database security evaluation

Users of medical information systems need confidence in the security of the system they are using. They also need a method to evaluate and compare its security capabilities. Every system has its own requirements for maintaining confidentiality, integrity and availability. In order to meet these requirements a number of security functions must be specified covering areas such as access control, auditing, error recovery, etc. Appropriate confidence in these functions is also required. The 'trust' in trusted computer systems rests on their ability to prove that their secure mechanisms work as advertised and cannot be disabled or diverted. The general framework and requirements for medical database security and a number of parameters of the evaluation problem are presented and discussed. The problem of database security evaluation is then discussed, and a number of specific proposals are presented, based on a number of existing medical database security systems.