A Recipe for Disaster

The Internet of Things is continuing to grow and expand, with some aspects of smart technology even entering the human body through pacemakers and other smart medical implants. However, as medical devices become smarter, they are also becoming more vulnerable to hackers and other malicious actors. The Cipher Brief asked Kurt Hagerman, the CISO for cybersecurity firm Armor, for an assessment of the potential threat to networked medical devices. According to him, the threat is real, and only changes in government regulations and consumer behavior can help to mitigate it.

The Cipher Brief: Networked medical devices appear to sit at the intersection of the recent spat of hospital cyber-attacks and the rising – but still vulnerable – Internet of Things (IoT). How would you gauge the potential threat of hackers starting to target these medical devices?