A Threat Table Based Assessment of Information Security in Telemedicine

Information security within healthcare is paramount and telemedicine applications present unique security challenges. Technology is giving rise to new and advanced telemedicine applications and understanding the security threats to these applications is needed to ensure, among other things, the privacy of patient information. This paper proposes a threat table approach to assess security threats pertaining to telemedicine applications. The concept and its usefulness are illustrated using a case study. This case study focuses on the capture and representation of salient security threats in telemedicine. To analyze the security threats to an application, it presents a threat modeling framework utilizing a table driven approach. The study reveals that even in a highly controlled environment with static locations, the security risks posed by telemedicine applications are significant, and that using a threat table approach provides an easy-to-use and effective method for managing these threats.