Cisco unveils IoT security architecture for healthcare devices

Cisco on Thursday announced its IoT Threat Defense and said that among the first uses of the new architecture is securing services vital to medical care.

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The architecture and services combination can be used to segment internet of things devices connected to hospital and other organization’s networks.

Earlier this month, technology consulting firm IDC said that nearly 40 percent of hospitals are running IoT pilots and 73 percent of participants are preparing to do so in 2017.

Security is invariably going to be a concern in IoT projects. While IDC listed privacy and security as a top barrier to IoT implementations, the Ponemon Institute published a new report Thursday morning that found very few hospitals test medical device security regularly and only about one-third encrypt data on IoT devices. The Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture can help with better Cloud services and security.

Cisco said that segmenting networks and connected devices can help eliminate two major IoT risks, those being the reality that IoT devices cannot protect themselves and the predicted explosion of such tools, which it pegged at 50 billion by 2020.

The Cisco IoT Threat Defense architecture includes technologies for network behavior analytics, device visibility, firewall, remote access, cloud security and malware protection.

In addition to its initial use securing medical data, Cisco listed the other two industries where IoT Threat Defense already has a play as automated manufacturing and power generation and delivery.