eHealth apps – your daily companion
In the healthcare sector, too, the range of apps has risen rapidly in recent years. Effectively, they have become everyday companions at work and at home. Already in 2017 roughly 325,000 mobile health apps were counted in app stores, and in 2018 a whopping 400 million of those apps have been downloaded. All those apps measure our fitness, give health tips, analyze physiological data, measure vital signs or calculate the dosage of medications.
More users come along with higher risk of data breaches and higher attractiveness for fraud
Connected health devices and wearables, such as glucometers and cardiac monitors, also collect a treasure trove of data from millions of people every day. Unfortunately, they are often unsecured and open to hacking, potentially exposing patients to adverse effects on their health. Healthccare providers and insurers must expect considerable legal, financial and operational consequences. Health insurance companies are modernizing their approach, providing digital access to insurance cards and medical records. The data breach risks associated with these are, of course, a major concern that needs to be addressed from the outset.
All companies in the fields of medicine and health insurance are faced with the challenge of providing top medical services. Digital services for patients are now being added, which on the one hand must comply with the strictest security and data protection regulations and be resistant to cyber attacks, which can be both costly to mitigate and dangerous for patients. The stakes are higher here than in almost any other field – it really is a matter of life and death in some cases.
Threats to your digitization efforts
The main threats arising from the digitalization of the healthcare industry are fraud, privacy and HIPPA (USA)/GDPR (EU) violations, ransomware and cyberattacks, unauthorized data collection, and hacking of connected medical devices and mobile phone applications. The only way to combat such threats is by implementing adequate security measures right from the very start. In particular, in app development, this means incorporating security measures during the develophment phase and not retrofitting security at the end.
Medical and health insurance professionals can meet this challenge by making online security a priority. Investing the time and resources required to protecting digital channels could prove invaluable on many levels, saving lives and preventing significant financial losses in the future. Since most health information is being digitalized for optimal mobile use, app security is at the forefront of this. Online security depends on being able to verify the identity of the patient and making sure that they are the only ones who are accessing their health information.
Call for action: Protect your eHealth app from growing risks and threats
It is Build38’s strong believe that in a changing digital landscape, app security isn’t a luxury. It is a necessity. Your developers should focus on what they are best at: delivering business value and world-class eHealth apps, while Build38 provides mobile app security. Build38’s Trusted Application Kit is a highly secure, holistic and easy to integrate mobile app security framework.
For the eHealth field, all this means that app users and service providers can rest easy in the knowledge that their highly sensitive data is safe. Patients can use the available digital services in comfort and ease, while medical professionals and insurers can be confident that the risks commonly associated with such services, such as fraud and cloning, are prevented.
how we can help
Build38’s approach to mobile app security is based on a unique triple-protection approach for compromise detection and continuous hardening: ensuring the integrity of device, app and security.
The SDK and cloud can detect changes to the device’ secure execution environment, and in case of compromise or an ongoing attack, it can render its own function useless immediately. At the same time the app is secured by various In-App protection mechanisms, and while in use it is protected by RASP-technology (Runtime Application Self Protection). The protected data is never visible in clear nor can it be extracted from the device at runtime. When the same data is in motion the Secure Channel and Certificate Pinning prevent Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.
For more detailed information on Build38’s mobile app security please read our whitepaper “Digitalisierung im Gesundheitswesen und Gefahren durch unsichere Apps” (in German) or the same whitepaper in English “Hacking Healthcare – why unsecure apps are bad for patients and providers“.
