Fu And Blum: Article Analysis

Medical devices are tools to help medical staff improve people’s health. What some of us don’t realize is how vulnerable those medical devices are and how they cause harm to the patients. Authors Kevin Fu and James Blum wrote an article to bring us up to date on the security of medical devices. In his article “Risks of Medical Device Software,” Fu and Blum explain to us what exactly goes wrong with medical devices and they suggest that medical cyber security must be improved to prevent from harming others. Both authors agree that in result of the decline of morality and availability caused by disregarded malware in medical devices led to deprive proper care and accurate medical results. In this article, the writers want their readers to be aware of the problem with medical devices and advocate for an upgrade in the device’s security. They begin by addressing the medical devices main issue which is software. Because medical devices run on software, they are vulnerable to cyber-attacks and malware. The authors stated that …show more content…
They give an example of a malware and state that the “Conficker is a relatively old piece of malware with well-known mitigation strategies.” The writers state that in 2012 reports show that most medical devices such as computers run the very basic and old Windows XP software. Security support was being shut down by medical device manufacturers, as a result there was no way a hospital and clinics were able to upgrade the devices software and security. According to Fu and Blum antiviruses aren’t always 100% secure. Anti-viruses are programmed to detect and exterminate files that may be harmful to the device. “On April 21, 2010, one-third of the hospitals in Rhode Island were forced to postpone elective surgeries and stop treating patients without traumas in emergency rooms.” (p.2) In the case given by the authors, the anti-virus deleted a very important Windows file that helped run the