A Blueprint for Implementing Security in Radiology

The HIPAA privacy and security regulation, the never ending series of operating system updates, the threat of intrusions and viruses from the outside as well as inside, and the requirement for remote access by service providers require a robust security framework for the PACS systems. The problems with the current deployments are: few guidelines to establish this framework, lack of tools, and the tools that are available are not well documented and/or adapted to this specific domain. Hence, PACS and Tele-radiology installations can be compromised, new installations, especially those requiring outside connectivity, can be stalled and the full benefits of this digital technology cannot be explored and used by several US institutions. In particular, current PACS archival systems, modalities, RIS and HIS need to be interconnected with set of routers, switches, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems. In particular, our work describes on how to secure DICOM and HL7 protocols using SSL/IPSec.

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