Challenges of Wireless Security in the Healthcare Field : A study on the WPA3 standard

Abstract: The healthcare environment is a complex one, saturated by wireless medical devices and sensitive patient data flowing through the network traffic. With the increased popularity of wireless medical devices in the healthcare domain together with the announcement of the new wireless security standard WPA3 comes a need to prepare for a new generation shift in wireless security. The goal of this study is therefore to investigate what challenges the healthcare sector can encounter when faced with the inevitable transition to WPA3. By performing a literature review on the security state of WPA3 compared to its predecessor and performing qualitative interviews with network technicians working in the healthcare sector, three major challenges were identified. IT professionals in the healthcare domain struggle with integrating legacy software systems, keeping middleware software solutions secure, and with handling hardware medical devices that come with outdated wireless standards. By analysing existing literature, several mitigating actions to battle these challenges were presented in this study.