Noteboom The Law Firm

VA Medical Devices Vulnerable to Attack

June 4, 2010 - Roger Baker is the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Two weeks ago he testified at a hearing in front of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs that 122 of the VA's medical devices have been compromised by malware over the last 14 months.

Baker went on to testify that protecting the VA's medical devises from cyber threats is one of the vital obstacles the VA must overcome. One of the main issues with doing this, however, is the security process must be certified. Because they must be certified, operating system patches and protective malware updates are strongly controlled.

Without the patches and updates, the VA's system is completely vulnerable and open to attack. Attacks on the VA's system could very well translate into threats against patient safety as the VA has over 50,000 medical devices on their network. A medical device is anything that has been used in a patent healthcare capacity for:

• Diagnoses;
• Treatment;
• Monitoring; or
• Has passed an FDA inspection.

 Infections not only compromise the VA's ability to provide healthcare, they cost a lot of money to combat.  The VA attempted to combat this issue last year and does employ a program designed specifically to protect their medical devices. The projected date to bring all of the VA's medical devices into the protection program is the end of the year.