Implantable Biomedical Device Gatekeeping for Secure Internet Communications
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Solution Overview
Problem
Implantable biomedical devices face challenges in secure communication with remote entities over the internet, as sensitive biometric data and configuration updates can be compromised by unauthorized access, requiring robust security measures to ensure only authorized recipients receive and transmit data.
Innovation Solution
A gatekeeping device is used to manage communications between implantable biomedical devices and remote internet-based entities, employing proximity pairing, directional safety, and encryption to ensure only authorized devices within a predetermined range can communicate, with updates and configurations first being tested on a virtual mirror of the device to ensure safety.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If implantable biomedical devices communicate with remote internet-based entities, then data transmission capability is improved, but security risk increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a gatekeeping device as an intermediary between the implantable biomedical device and remote internet-based entities. This gatekeeper receives communications, verifies authentication credentials, validates IP addresses, and relays only authorized communications, thereby enabling internet connectivity while maintaining security through a trusted intermediary layer
Solution Approach 2:
The communication system is segmented into distinct functional layers: the implantable device, the gatekeeping device, and remote entities. This segmentation isolates the vulnerable implantable device from direct internet exposure while allowing controlled data transmission through the gatekeeping layer, resolving the contradiction between connectivity and security
2Reliability
If encryption algorithms are used to protect communications, then security is improved, but processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The gatekeeping device serves as a computational intermediary that handles complex encryption and decryption operations. The implantable biomedical device only performs simple encryption/decryption, while the gatekeeper manages the computationally intensive tasks of validating authentication credentials and managing encryption keys, thereby distributing processing complexity appropriately
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses time-varying encryption parameters where the gatekeeping device generates and manages dynamic encryption keys based on authenticated communications. This allows strong security through changing parameters while keeping the implantable device's processing requirements minimal, as it only needs to implement basic encryption with provided keys rather than full cryptographic protocols
3Reliability
If authentication credentials are verified for each communication, then access control is improved, but communication delay increases
Solution Approach 1:
The gatekeeping device performs authentication credential verification in advance before relaying communications. By pre-validating authentication credentials and maintaining a cache of verified credentials, the system ensures strict access control while minimizing real-time communication delay, as subsequent authenticated communications can be relayed more quickly
Data Source
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AI summary
Apparatus and associated methods relate to providing secure gatekeeping of communication from a remote internet-based website having an Internet-Protocol (IP) address to an implantable biomedical device. A gatekeeping device receives the communication transmitted by the remote internet-based website. The communication received is encoded using a first encoding algorithm. The gatekeeping device decodes the communication received. The gatekeeping device then encodes the communication decoded using a second encoding algorithm. The gatekeeping device wirelessly relays the communication encoded using the second encoding algorithm to the implantable biomedical device. In some embodiments, the gatekeeping device compares the IP address of the communication transmitted by the remote internet-based website with a predetermined static IP address corresponding to the implantable biomedical device and rejects the communication transmitted by the remote internet-based website if the IP address is not that of the predetermined static IP address corresponding to the implantable biomedical device.