Fielding the constant threats to medical technologies can be a mammoth task.
Cybersecurity is a moving target across every industry. Although not a new concept in medical devices, the maturity level is comparatively low versus other business sectors. One of the biggest issues that devices face is postmarket vulnerability—the longer a product is on the market, the greater the opportunity for threats. And taking into consideration the industry’s low maturity level in this area, many devices already on the market were not built with the intent of having robust security.
“It’s the dynamic nature of these issues that I think lends cybersecurity to be such a challenge for us, because [of the] dynamic threats—in other words, we ship a device into the field and later we learn of a vulnerability and have to go mediate that vulnerability,” said Eric Soederberg, president and CEO of Sunrise Labs at the MedTech Intelligence mHealth for Medical Device Manufacturers conference last month. “That requires us to go fix things in the field, and maybe even plan to do that on a regular basis. And changing something in the field is something that, as a product development person working on medical devices, you spend your whole career trying to avoid. This is a whole new mindset.”
Doug is one of Suntra’s most senior engineers, bringing over 25 years of product development experience to complex design challenges. He architects and implements real-time systems and software while expertly leading client projects. With dozens of medical devices to his credit, Doug has deep expertise in regulatory expectations—he wrote the quality system for one of […]
