Comparative Study of Security in IEEE 802.11-2007 and IEEE 802.15.4-2006 for Patient Monitoring Environments
Aftab Ahmad, Anton Riedl, W. Jason Naramore, Nee-Yin Chou, Matthew Scott Alley · 2010
Extensive security is required for wireless networking in health care due to regulations for patient privacy and the necessary availability of protected health information for prescribed entities. IEEE 802.11-2007 and IEEE 802.15.4-2006 are compared with respect to their security provisions in the patient monitoring environment. This study demonstrates that IEEE 802.11-2007 has a slight edge over IEEE 802.15.4-2006 due to the specification of port-based user authentication with IEEE 802.1X/EAP. A security filtering database external to the wireless protocols may provide sufficient support to secure protected health information by automatically filtering protected data from disallowed entities.