Security Challenges in Emerging Healthcare Networks - MN502 Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of the security challenges within emerging healthcare networks. It begins with an introduction to the topic, followed by a literature review that covers the architecture of healthcare networks, recent developments, and the critical importance of security in this sector. The report identifies three primary security issues: man-in-the-middle attacks, network manipulation, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The report then delves into relevant mitigation techniques, specifically focusing on strategies to combat DDoS attacks, which is considered the most vulnerable of the three. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for robust security measures to protect sensitive patient data and ensure the efficient functioning of healthcare networks. The report draws on various sources to support its claims and provides a comprehensive overview of the topic.

Running head: SECURITY CHALLENGES IN HEALTHCARE NETWORKS
Security Challenges in Emerging Networks
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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SECURITY CHALLENGES IN EMERGING NETWORKS
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Literature Review..................................................................................................................................2
1. Architecture of Health Care Networks...........................................................................................2
2. Recent Developments in the Health Care Networks......................................................................3
3. Importance of Security in Health Care Network............................................................................3
Three Potential Security Issues in Health Care Networks..................................................................4
Relevant Mitigation Techniques for Distributed Denial of Service Attacks............................................5
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................5
References.............................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
The specific data network or the computerized network can be defined as the digital
telecommunications network, which enables various nodes to share several resources [3]. These
computer devices are responsible for exchanging the sensitive information or data with each other
by taking the major help of few data connections in the nodes. These data connections can be easily
established with the cable media such as wires, optical cables and also the wireless media such as
wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi. The basic use of the network technologies are growing rapidly in the sector
of health care [8]. The health care could be eventually considered as one of the major applications
for the various applications on the basis of networks. The several networks can easily give the
effective as well as efficient solutions for the few factors such as accessing the electronic medical
record or EMR, online claims submissions, patient accountings, biomedical information, admission
information and many more. The several networks of health care are highly vital and important for
the health care sector [14]. The following report will be outlining a detailed description about the
various security based challenges or issues within the emerging networks in the sector of health
care. The report also provides the network architecture, recent development as well as the
importance of privacy and security.
Literature Review
1. Architecture of Health Care Networks
The sector of health care majorly consists of those typical organizations that are responsible
for providing the various medical services as well as medical insurances, that also manufacture the
medical equipment or drugs and finally facilitate the provision of this health care for the patients [1].
The sector of health care consists of the diversified array of various industries and even with kinds of
activities, which are ranging either from the researches to the manufactures or to facilities
management. These makers of the medical equipment substantially range from those firms that
manufacture the standardized and familiar products such as bandages, gloves, scalpels and forceps.
The various experts of health care and the patients get advantages from the sector of health care.
The respective networks of the health care sector easily and promptly provide various advantages to
the doctors, nurses and patients [11]. The routers, servers, firewalls, gateways, switches and clients
are clearly depicted in the provided architecture of a health care network.

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Figure 1: Detailed Architecture of a Health Care Network
(Source: Tokuyoshi 2013)
This above provided figure has properly demonstrated the clear understanding of gateway,
OAM server, clients and server farm. The server selected in this network is from Oracle. These
mentioned four components are the main elements of the network architecture and it is absolutely
based on the important concept and ideology of service oriented network architectures or SONA [7].
All of these ideologies could be sub divided to three structural elements that are server farm’s level,
infrastructure level and client level.
2. Recent Developments in the Health Care Networks
The networks of health care sector are eventually bringing out various developments for
their users in the entire world [5]. Several important and significant development programs have
been deployed within the rural areas. The main purpose of the recent developments is assisting the
health care sector for properly develop the integrated network of health care. All of the networks of
health care sector can be extremely effective and efficient strategies to achieve the economies of
scale and efficiency. The most significant objective is to increment the communication and thus
mitigate all the current problems with this communication. Furthermore, the sensitive information is
extremely dangerous for the networks and thus is often hacked by various hackers [13]. The lack of
data or information loss is the major recent development of health care network.
3. Importance of Security in Health Care Network
The security is the most significant requirement or need in the networks of health care
sector. This network security is the perfect protection or prevention from the destruction, misuses,
accessing or hacking of the confidential files and directories in the computer based or digitalized
networking system [9]. The most important and noteworthy threats or risks to the health care
network are identity theft, adware, spyware, worms or computer viruses. The major importance of

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the network security is that it could easily and promptly detect or prevent the viruses’ entries.
Moreover, the other threats are also ceased with this type of security. Various security measures
such as encryption and decryption are present for stopping the hacker to get hold or access of the
data [3]. Since, these networks of health care sector could store the confidential information like the
various details of patients or progress reports of those patients, there is a significant importance of
this network security.
Three Potential Security Issues in Health Care Networks
Several vulnerable and potential security issues are present in the networks of health care
sector. Within them, three most vulnerable issues of security are listed below:
i) Man in the Middle Attack: The first and the most significant issues of security that is
present for the networks of health care sector is the man-in-the-middle attack [10]. In this particular
attack, the attacker or the hacker would secretly alters or simply relays the sensitive data between
two distinct parties, who are having the stronger belief that they are talking each other directly and
without any interruption. The best and the most suitable example of the man-in-the-middle attacks
would be eavesdropping [12]. This hacker makes certain self-sufficient connection with all the
victims and next he is responsible for relaying all the messages within them to make these victims
strongly believe that they are communicating to one another privately; however the complete
conversation is eventually controlled by the specific attacker. He could even intercept the sensitive
message, which is passing between the victims and then inject all the new ones. This attacker within
the reception range of all unencrypted WAPS such as wireless fidelity could easily insert himself as
the man in the middle [6]. The mutual authentications are circumvented and hence this type of
attack can succeed whenever the attacker will be impersonating at all the end points to the
respective satisfaction at the legalized ends.
ii) Network Manipulation: The second important issue of security in the network of health
care is the specific manipulation of network [2]. It is the kind of network resource or media
manipulation in the connection of Internet that is generally conducted for either getting the major
access of the sensitive data or for destructing the information system for any company.
Discreditation is another important and significant type of network manipulation issue. To
accomplish all the major goals, the various software professionals, online influencers or hired
professionals use few Internet bots such as click bots, social bots and vote bots [4]. The cognitive
hackings are being completed when this network manipulation is implemented.

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iii) Distributed Denial of Service Attack: Another important and significant security issue,
which is extremely vulnerable for the attack of DDoS attacks or distributed denial of service attacks.
Within this particular attack, the hacker subsequently seeks into the machine or network resource to
make the machine absolutely unavailable for all the authorized and intended users [7]. It is
eventually done either by the temporary or by the permanent service disruptions within any specific
host, which is connected with Internet connectivity. This kind of attack can be easily achieved by
simply flooding all the target resources as well as target machine with several superfluous requests
and with the major attempt to overload these targeted machines. Next, all the authorized and
authenticated members are prevented from getting proper access of the sensitive information or
data [12]. In this type of attack of distributed denial of service, the specified incoming traffic is being
flooded by an attacker so that this victim is not getting the confidential data from the respective
sources.
The three above-mentioned risks are required to be mitigated as soon as possible since they
could be extremely dangerous for the users of health care sector.
Relevant Mitigation Techniques for Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
Among the three mentioned issues of security in heath care network, the distributed denial
of service attack is considered as the most vulnerable [5]. This can be easily mitigated with the help
of some of the important techniques and these are given below:
The mitigation of distributed-denial-of-service attack can be defined as the collection of
some of the tools or techniques, which are helpful to resist and mitigate the significant impact of this
particular attack over the network of health care [9]. It is solely attached with the Internet
connection after protecting the target networks or relay networks. The respective traffic is then
identified to separate the human traffic such as bots as well as the attacked web browser. The
specific process is being eventually completed after comparing the signatures and hence testing
several attributes of the network traffic such as the Javascript footprints, IP address, cookie
variations as well as HTTP headers. These DDoS attacks are highly vulnerable and threatening to
each and every user. The next important methodology for mitigating the security issues is by
implementing encryption technique [1]. The confidential data is being encrypted to a hidden text
and then only the receiver or the sender could access the data. Verification of SSL setups is the next
important technique for detecting the attacker and removing DDoS attack.

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Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, conclusion can be drawn that the computerized
networks within the specific sector of health care is extremely important and necessary to get more
effective and efficient solutions or accessing the confidential or sensitive data for the various
patients as well as the doctors and nurses. This sector of health care is eventually responsible to
provide several types of solutions such as imaging, patient accountings, electronic medical record or
EMR, online claims submissions, biomedical information, admission information and many more.
Since, all of these above mentioned solutions are present in the health care sector; these are
subsequently becoming more advanced every day. The specified providers of this health care sector
are adopting newer technologies for obtaining extreme efficiency as well as effectiveness. However,
although this sector has all of these advantages or solutions, all of the networks are extremely
vulnerable for the several kinds of security and privacy challenges or issues. The attackers or the
hackers hence can easily and promptly hack or access the sensitive data. This particular report has
clearly outlined the entire concept of the networks of health care sector. The architecture of the
health care network as well as the current development of these types of networks is being properly
explained in this report. Furthermore, three important and significant security issues for these types
of health care networks are also provided here. The final part of this report has described the
mitigation techniques for mitigating any one of the identified security issues in health care network.

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References
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a public world. Pearson Education India, 2016.
[2] Kahate, Atul. Cryptography and network security. Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2013.
[3] Manshaei, Mohammad Hossein, Quanyan Zhu, Tansu Alpcan, Tamer Bacşar, and Jean-Pierre
Hubaux. "Game theory meets network security and privacy." ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 45, no.
3 (2013): 25.
[4] Tokuyoshi, Brian. "The security implications of BYOD." Network Security 2013, no. 4 (2013): 12-
13.
[5] Knapp, Eric D., and Joel Thomas Langill. Industrial Network Security: Securing critical
infrastructure networks for smart grid, SCADA, and other Industrial Control Systems. Syngress, 2014.
[6] Chen, Gaojie, Yu Gong, Pei Xiao, and Jonathon A. Chambers. "Physical layer network security in
the full-duplex relay system." IEEE transactions on information forensics and security 10, no. 3
(2015): 574-583.
[7] Liang, Xiannuan, and Yang Xiao. "Game theory for network security." IEEE Communications
Surveys & Tutorials 15, no. 1 (2013): 472-486.
[8] White, Gregory B., Eric A. Fisch, and Udo W. Pooch. Computer system and network security. CRC
press, 2017.
[9] Kizza, Joseph Migga. Guide to computer network security. London: Springer, 2013.
[10] Zaalouk, Adel, Rahamatullah Khondoker, Ronald Marx, and Kpatcha Bayarou. "Orchsec: An
orchestrator-based architecture for enhancing network-security using network monitoring and sdn
control functions." In Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS), 2014 IEEE, pp. 1-9.
IEEE, 2014.
[11] Acemoglu, Daron, Azarakhsh Malekian, and Asu Ozdaglar. "Network security and
contagion." Journal of Economic Theory166 (2016): 536-585.
[12] Suo, Hui, Zhuohua Liu, Jiafu Wan, and Keliang Zhou. "Security and privacy in mobile cloud
computing." In Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2013 9th
International, pp. 655-659. IEEE, 2013.

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[13] Bejtlich, Richard. The practice of network security monitoring: understanding incident detection
and response. No Starch Press, 2013.
[14] Anwar, Raja Waseem, Majid Bakhtiari, Anazida Zainal, Abdul Hanan Abdullah, Kashif Naseer
Qureshi, F. Computing, and J. Bahru. "Security issues and attacks in wireless sensor network." World
Applied Sciences Journal 30, no. 10 (2014): 1224-1227.