Securing Health-Related Data Transmission Using ECG and Named Data Networks

Public healthcare is a major priority in today’s society. With the introduction of wearable devices, monitoring, detecting and preventing health conditions has become cheaper and easier. On the down side, transmitting and storing all this sensitive data poses new challenges. We propose an original solution for securing the transmission of data gathered by sensors in a Wireless Body Area Network using the Electrocardiogram signal and Named Data Networks. Our contribution is two-fold: first of all, we make use of the inherent features of such networks to securely transmit sensitive, health-related data (of a regular patient or a driver) to the cloud and then disseminate it to interested parties such as physicians. Second, our approach exploits the properties of the Electrocardiogram signal (robustness to attacks, universality and liveness detection) to encrypt this data and provide a simple and fast authentication mechanism between the devices in the Wireless Body Area Network.