Threat Modelling and Security Enhancements in Wireless Body Area Networks for Smart Healthcare

Abstract

Kamran Ayub and Roushdy Alshawa

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are critical components of emerging smart healthcare solutions. Due to the intrinsic nature of wireless communication and the potentially sensitive medical data they carry, such networks are often very vulnerable to many types of security threats. As a result, the security of WBANs becomes a prime concern when they are considered for use in healthcare or medical applications. This text enumerates common security threats that a typical WBAN should prepare for. It also provides a set of enhancement mechanisms and techniques that could be implemented to augment the security of WBANs.

Furthermore, a vital precautionary activity that should be taken in the initial steps towards developing a secure WBAN system— threat modeling—is also described. This text presents two elaborated example cases for the threat modeling technique for WBANs: patrolling and insulin injection WBANs. The cases demonstrate that threats in WBANs are further sources of vulnerabilities, beyond the definition of threats from common knowledge, that should be evaluated and addressed before deployment. Results show that there are plenty of possible problems that threaten the security and privacy of WBAN systems, which should be taken into strong consideration. It is believed that the proposed threat modeling methodology here will significantly contribute to secure designs of WBANs and can also potentially be generalized to other embedded systems as well.

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