Ransomware attacks have increased dramatically in recent years, with specific attacks targeting the medical community's infrastructure. Nokomis demonstrated under Phase I of this program that leveraging changes in unintended Radio Frequency (RF) emissions signatures provides a means to detect these attacks in near-real-time, in approximately 25 ms, with a False Alarm Rate of <1x10-15. This is more than two orders of magnitude faster than conventional software diagnostic tools. Under the Phase II effort Nokomis will develop multiple prototype devices that will be tested with networked medical devices. The purpose of the Phase II effort is to develop an industrial design for the Medical Device Cyber-Threat Detection and Mitigation (MedCyt) prototype device, build and validate its functionality, and position it for market transition. The design and manufacturing will use engineering best practices while using Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) medical devices, such as Infusion Pumps, as test specimens for testing against representative cyber-attacks.
Increased threat of cyber-attacks in hospitals and medical care facilities requires more layers of cyber-security to ensure operation of the healthcare infrastructure. The proposed physical cyber-security technology will help to secure networked medical devices and computers through almost instant detection of these events.
