Security Challenges in Fog Computing in Healthcare

The Fog Computing is a highly virtualized platform that provides storage, computing and networking services between the Cloud data centers and end devices. Fog computing fits the characteristics of real-time health monitoring systems. In such systems, a large amount of data is acquired from a multitude of bio and environmental sensors. On the other hand, its distribution and open structure makes it vulnerable and weak to security threats. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to identify the security challenges in healthcare.

This applied research has been done in three phases using mixed-method approach in 2019. In the first phase, security codes from library resources by content analysis was identified. In the second phase interpretation of experts by Delphi method, Panel of IT experts consists of twelve members who work on healthcare sector was evaluated. Finally, we used Analytic Hierarchy Process method for ranking security codes.

According to fuzzy AHP results attacks(0.31), secure communications(0.23), authentication and access control(0.19), trust(0.15) and privacy preservation(0.12) are the most important criteria in security challenges of fog computing.

According to the results of this study, secure communications and network attacks are the major challenges in fog computing, because fog nodes are usually deployed in some places with relatively weak protection. They may encounter various malicious attacks. As a result, policymakers should be aware of the role of secure communications and network attacks in fog computing implementation.