On threat modeling and mitigation of medical cyber-physical systems

Medical Cyber Physical Systems (MCPS) are life-critical networked systems of medical devices. These systems are increasingly used in hospitals to provide high-quality healthcare for patients. However, MCPS also bring concerns about security and safety and new challenges to protect patients from acts of theft or malice. In this paper, we focus our investigation on a thorough understanding of threat modeling in MCPS. We examine the roles of stakeholders and system components and sketch an abstract architecture of a MCPS to demonstrate various threat modeling options. We also discuss possible security techniques and their applicability and utility for the design of secure MCPS. This work forms a basis for understanding threatening conditions in MCPS, and embarks on promising state-of-the-art research trends for addressing MCPS security concerns.