Firewall Best Practices for Securing Smart Healthcare Environment: A Review

Smart healthcare environments are growing at a rapid pace due to the services and benefits offered to healthcare practitioners and to patients. At the same time, smart healthcare environments are becoming increasingly complex environments where a plethora of devices are linked with each other, to deliver services to patients, and they require special security measures to protect the privacy and integrity of user data. Moreover, these environments are exposed to various kinds of security risks, threats, and attacks. Firewalls are considered as the first line of defense for securing smart healthcare networks and addressing the challenges mentioned above. Firewalls are applied at different levels in networks, and range from conventional server-based to cloud-based firewalls. However, the selection and implementation of a proper firewall to get the maximum benefit is a challenging task. Therefore, understanding firewall types, the services offered, and analyzing underlying vulnerabilities are important design considerations that need addressing before implementing a firewall in a smart healthcare environment. The paper provides a comprehensive review and best practices of firewall types, with offered benefits and drawbacks, which may help to define a comprehensive set of policies for smart healthcare devices and environments.