Abstract
Insulin therapy has enabled diabetic patients to maintain blood glucose control to lead healthier lives. Today, rather than manually injecting insulin using syringes, a patient can use a device, such as an insulin pump, to programmatically deliver insulin. This allows for more granular insulin delivery while attaining blood glucose control. The insulin pump system features have increasingly benefited patients, but the complexity of the resulting system has grown in parallel. As a result security breaches that can negatively affect patient health are now possible.
Rather than focus on the security of a single device, we concentrate on protecting the security of the entire system. In this paper we describe the security issues as they pertain to an insulin pump system that includes an embedded system of components including the insulin pump, continuous glucose management system, blood glucose monitor, and other associated devices (e.g., a mobile phone or personal computer). We detail not only the growing wireless communication threat in each system component, but we also describe additional threats to the system (e.g., availability and integrity). Our goal is to help create a trustworthy infusion pump system that will ultimately strengthen pump safety, and we describe mitigating solutions to address identified security issues both for now and in the future.