Читать книгу Do No Harm - Matthew Webster - Страница 32

Operating systems are another aspect of many connected medical devices. In many cases these are the same operating systems you may have at home. The first chapter covered medical imaging devices running on Windows XP. Another report from 802secure stated that 83% of the systems are running on outdated operating systems—a 56% jump from the previous year as a result of Windows 7 not being supported any longer.¹⁷ In some cases these systems can be and are updated, but in other cases, the manufacturer will not support upgrades, making things a bit more challenging in hospitals.

Sometimes the issues of old operating systems are beyond the control of the manufacturers. The FDA can take as much as 5 to 6 years to approve a particular device.¹⁸ Many companies are on a 3-year cycle for upgrading hardware. Imagine the quandary device manufacturers are in. Quite often the devices are released to the public with known vulnerabilities. The manufacturers can't change operating systems mid-stream. To make matters worse, many medical devices have a 15- to 20-year life span.¹⁹ As of this writing, Windows XP has 741 known vulnerabilities²⁰—many of which cannot be patched because it is not supported. This is a huge challenge because sometimes the hardware cannot support new operating systems. The fact that many IoMT systems are kept for 15 to 20 years creates other challenges. It is simply impossible for manufacturers, developers, and operating systems to keep patching systems for 15 plus years. Inadvertently, it becomes an intersection where all of these problems create an environment that is essentially a hacker's paradise.