2nd Annual Medical Device Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation Conference: Speaker Interview

 

Bill Hagestad
Senior Principal Cyber Security Engineer, R&D
Smiths Medical 

 

Bill will be one of the distinguished speakers at the 2nd Annual Medical Device Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation Conference.




Why is the 2nd Annual Medical Device Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation Conference important to medical device security and manufacturing teams?
Last year’s event was superb! The industry representation was remarkable and the chance to meet peers as well as the FDA was invaluable!

 

How has medical device cybersecurity evolved in the last several years?
Perhaps years is too strong a measurement as most medical devices remain in the field for decades – thus, the more telling questions include how have medical device manufacturers and healthcare delivery organizations (HDO) responded to the threat to legacy designs and architecture? In this regard cyber & information security has significantly evolved with organizational and industry leadership’s awareness,

 

What initiatives are on the horizon at your organization in 2017?
Ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of both legacy and new medical devices in accordance with the FDA’s pre- and post-market guidance’s.

 

How do you see medical device cybersecurity evolving over the next 5-10 years?
Existing and evolving cybersecurity best practices from defence, financial and other critical areas of infrastructure protection will be more rapidly applied to the healthcare industry.

 

Why is this conference important to you as an industry leader?
This conference is important for a number of reasons but most importantly because of both the content quality and comradery of like-minded professional individuals within the healthcare industry, significantly so in the medical device manufacturer space.

 

If you had to describe medical device cybersecurity in one word, what would it be?
Progress.

 

What topics are you most excited about for the conference program this year?
The quality and variety of the panel discussions is significant!

 

What are the “key takeaways” for your presentation/panel discussion?
That through the engineering and technical evaluation experience of interconnected devices medical device manufacturers can improve the overall cybersecurity of their devices while simultaneously reducing the threat surface for healthcare delivery organizations.