Cybersecurity for Medical Devices

Brian Pate of SoftwareCPR® writes:
In May 2014, FDA offered further guidance to manufacturers regarding premarket submission information identifying cyber-security risks and hazards associated with their medical devices, and the responsibility for engineering appropriate risk controls to address patient safety and assure proper device performance. FDA encouraged manufacturers to report any cyber-security incidents that may occur.

Many manufacturers may be struggling with first steps toward improved cyber-security or what process to use. Since many medical device manufacturers are already familiar with the ISO 14971 risk management process, SoftwareCPR® recommends that cyber-security risks simply be added to the existing risk analysis. Using techniques such as threat modeling, cyber-intrusions can be treated like failure modes that can lead to high level hazards that have been identified for the clinical harms of the medical device. The ISO 14971 process will then guide the evaluation and design of appropriate risk controls for these types of cyber-intrusions.

Device manufacturers and healthcare institutions should also become familiar with a number of Health IT security standards – including the IEC 80001 series – that contain specific recommendations for addressing and assessing cybersecurity risks.

About the author

Partner and General Manager, Brian Pate is ISO 1385:2016 Lead Auditor certified for Medical Device Quality Management Systems (MD), and ISO 19011:2018 Management Systems Auditing (AU) and Leading Management Systems Audit Teams (TL). Brian started his medical device career in anesthesia clinical research in 1985 and has since worked both academia and industry including many years with Johnson & Johnson, Baxter Healthcare, and GE Medical. Brian’s roles have included software engineering, systems engineering, quality assurance, and regulatory affairs. Brian has served on multiple AAMI TIR working groups, including TIR32-2008 (Application of ISO 14971 Risk Management to Software; now IEC 80002-1) and TIR45-2012 (Guidance on the use of Agile practices in the development of medical device software) and served as a reviewer for the 2nd edition of TIR45. Brian serves on the AAMI Software Committee and as an AAMI instructor for the software, design controls, and agile methods courses. Brian also is a member of the Underwriters’ Laboratories (UL) Standards Technical Panel for UL1998 (Software in Programmable Components) and or UL5500 (Remote Software Updates).

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ISO13485:2016 ISO 13485 Internal Audit(or) Training Course (Live, 3-day)

IEC 62304 and other Emerging Standards Impacting Medical Device Software (Live, 3-day)

Being Agile & Yet CompliantISO 14971 SaMD Risk Management

Software Risk Management

Medical Device Cybersecurity

Software Verification

IEC 62366 Usability Process and Documentation

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