External Devices

Guess researchers want patients to strap on another devices to protect them from attacks to their already strapped on/implanted medical device.
From a technical point of view however, since medical devices have low resources, external devices can provide the buffer to perform all the intensive security computations and communications with the external world and be assured their communication with the medical device will always be secure and proof read by it. The following articles suggest few of these external devices:

1. Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder - a summary is below:
• Communication Cloaker is suggested that balances safety and open access in emergencies along with security and privacy under adversarial conditions with protection of battery life and quick response time. 
• IMD, cloaker and programmer communication can be: cloaker should proxy the communications between the programmer and IMD or cloaker should hand-off a lightweight access credential to the programmer. The cloaker’s presence is apprehended by it detecting a pulse of the wearer.
2. IMDGuard - an external wearable guardian is a popular reference in this topic:-
• ECG signals as keys. Cannot forge IMD except during physical contacts. Prevent attackers from jamming the signals between IMD and Guardian by notifications.
• IMDGuard does the authentication of programmer so as to save IMD battery and has two modes of operation - emergency and regular.
• Guardian cannot stop messages between attacker and IMD, but can jam messages other way round since it knows IMD’s credentials.