Improving Healthcare IoT Security: How to Protect Unmanaged Medical and IT Assets

Healthcare networks have expanded far beyond traditional IT. Today, patient monitors, infusion pumps, imaging systems, and dozens of other connected devices share the same infrastructure as workstations, servers, and administrative systems.

Many connected medical devices were designed primarily for clinical availability, safety, and specialized functionality. Some older or constrained devices may lack the security capabilities available on conventional IT endpoints, which increases exposure when security teams also have incomplete visibility into what is connected and how those devices communicate.

Keep reading to learn what healthcare IoT security involves, why unmanaged medical and IT assets are such a persistent challenge, and how network-level visibility helps close the gaps that traditional security tools miss.

• Key Takeaways
• What Is Healthcare Security
• The Growing Challenge of Unmanaged Medical and IT Assets
• How Medical Device Security Differs From Traditional IT Security
• Risks Associated With Poor Medical IoT Security
• How Visibility Strengthens IoT Security in Healthcare
• Best Practices for Improving Healthcare IoT Security
• The Impact of Deep Observability in Medical Device Security
• Visibility Is the Foundation of Healthcare IoT Security
• Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

• Healthcare IoT security requires a different approach than traditional IT security because many medical devices can’t support endpoint agents and operate on long, vendor-controlled lifecycles.
• Unknown or unmanaged assets are common in healthcare environments, and they represent significant risk if security teams can’t see or monitor them.
• Network visibility gives security teams insight into connected devices and their communication patterns without requiring software installation on the devices themselves.
• A combination of asset discovery, segmentation, and traffic monitoring strengthens the overall security posture of healthcare networks.

What Is Healthcare IoT Security?

Healthcare internet of things (IoT) security refers to the practices, tools, and strategies used to protect connected medical devices and the networks they operate on. It covers everything from clinical equipment, like infusion pumps, patient monitors, imaging systems, and smart beds, to building management systems that control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), access controls, and environmental sensors.

Where traditional IT security focuses on endpoints like laptops and servers, medical IoT security has to account for devices that often can’t be patched, run proprietary software, and require continuous uptime. The overlap between healthcare IoT security, medical device security, and broader healthcare cybersecurity is significant. A vulnerability in a connected device can create a path to other network systems if it isn’t properly monitored and segmented.

The Growing Challenge of Unmanaged Medical and IT Assets

One of the most persistent problems in IoT security in healthcare is the sheer volume of assets that fall outside standard security management. Many medical devices run on old operating systems or have vendor restrictions that prevent security agents from being installed. Endpoint protection may be unavailable, unsupported, or clinically inappropriate for some medical and IoT devices. In those cases, passive network visibility, traffic metadata, and other compensating controls can complement endpoint security across the broader environment.

Asset inventories in healthcare organizations are often incomplete. Shadow IT, third-party contractor devices, and temporary clinical equipment all add to the complexity. When security teams don’t have a full picture of what’s connected, they can’t assess or manage the risk those devices carry.

The most common categories of unmanaged assets in healthcare networks include:

• Connected medical devices and clinical systems: Infusion pumps, patient monitors, imaging equipment, and other clinical tools that operate continuously and often can’t be taken offline for updates.
• Legacy IT infrastructure and unsupported operating systems: Older hardware and software that no longer receive vendor support but remain in active use across clinical and administrative environments.
• IoT devices used for facilities management: Environmental controls, HVAC systems, physical security cameras, and access control systems that are networked but frequently overlooked by IT and security teams.

How Medical Device Security Differs From Traditional IT Security

In most IT environments, security updates and patches are routine. In healthcare, that calculus is more complicated. Medical devices prioritize availability and patient safety above all else, and taking a device offline — even briefly — can directly affect clinical operations or patient outcomes.

Security teams have to work within constraints that don’t exist in traditional IT: they can’t always force updates, they have to work around vendor maintenance schedules, and they need to weigh risk reduction against the potential impact of any disruption to care delivery.

The specific challenges that set medical device security apart include:

• Long device lifecycles: Medical devices often remain in use for 10 to 15 years, well past the point where software support is available.
• Limited patching capabilities: Many devices run firmware or proprietary software that can only be updated by the manufacturer, if at all.
• Vendor-controlled maintenance schedules: Manufacturers may restrict what can be done to a device to maintain regulatory compliance and warranty validity.
• Proprietary communication protocols: Many devices employ specialized or proprietary protocols, or healthcare-specific standards that require security tools capable of inspecting their traffic.

Risks Associated With Poor Medical IoT Security

The consequences of inadequate IoT security in healthcare reach well beyond data exposure. Ransomware can disrupt healthcare operations, and connected medical devices may create additional entry points for attackers. Once an attacker gains access through a vulnerable device, lateral movement through the network becomes possible.

The most serious risks associated with poor medical IoT security include ransomware and malware attacks, lateral movement from vulnerable devices into critical systems, data breaches involving protected health information (PHI), and operational disruptions that delay or degrade patient care.

Real-world attack scenarios that play out in healthcare environments include:

• Compromised imaging devices: Radiology systems connected to hospital networks have been targeted in ransomware attacks, forcing facilities to revert to manual processes and delaying diagnoses.
• Vulnerable infusion pumps: Some models may use legacy software, unsupported components, or communications with limited cryptographic protection. Organizations should validate device-specific security characteristics and use network traffic metadata and behavioral baselines to identify unexpected destinations, protocols, or communication patterns without disrupting clinical operation.
• Unsecured building systems: HVAC and access control systems connected to the same network as clinical equipment can potentially serve as entry points in attack scenarios.

How Visibility Strengthens IoT Security in Healthcare

Security teams can’t protect what they can’t see. That’s especially true in healthcare, where the number and variety of connected devices make comprehensive inventory and monitoring difficult with traditional tools.

Network visibility can help security teams identify connected devices, understand communication patterns, and flag unauthorized or anomalous behavior without requiring software agents on the devices themselves. This is particularly relevant for medical IoT security, where agent-based monitoring isn’t a viable option for most clinical equipment.

These are the questions a healthcare organization should be able to answer at any given time:

• What devices are connected to the network?
• Who is responsible for them, and which clinical or operational function do they support?
• What data are they accessing and transmitting?
• Are they communicating in expected ways, with expected destinations?

If any of those questions can’t be answered with confidence, the organization has a visibility gap, and visibility gaps are where attackers find their footholds.

Best Practices for Improving Healthcare IoT Security

Protecting unmanaged assets in healthcare requires a layered approach. No single control addresses the full scope of the problem, but the following practices significantly reduce exposure across medical, IoT, and traditional IT environments:

1. Establish Continuous Asset Discovery

A static inventory rarely stays accurate for long. Devices are added, removed, and reconfigured regularly, and any gap in the inventory represents a potential blind spot. These steps help keep inventory current:

• Build a comprehensive inventory of all medical and IT assets, including device type, ownership, function, and network location.
• Identify unmanaged, unknown, and rogue devices as soon as they connect to the network.
• Continuously update asset records as environments change, rather than relying on periodic manual audits.

2. Classify and Prioritize Device Risk

Not all assets carry the same level of risk, and security resources are finite. A risk-based approach focuses attention where it matters most:

• Categorize devices by criticality, known vulnerabilities, and potential business and clinical impact.
• Focus remediation and monitoring resources on assets that present the highest risk to patient safety and operational continuity.
• Align prioritization with regulatory requirements and clinical workflows to avoid creating disruption in the process of reducing risk.

3. Implement Network Segmentation

Segmentation limits the blast radius of a compromise by restricting how devices communicate with one another. Even if an attacker gains access through a vulnerable device, segmentation can prevent them from moving freely through the network.

• Limit communication pathways between devices and systems based on function and necessity.
• Use documented, clinically validated allowlists and segmentation policies to restrict communication to approved systems and services. Then use out-of-band traffic monitoring to verify that enforcement matches intended workflows and to surface exceptions.
• Create security zones based on device type and function — separating clinical devices, administrative systems, and building management infrastructure.

4. Monitor East-West Traffic

Perimeter defenses alone aren’t enough. Threats that originate inside the network — or that have already bypassed perimeter controls — require internal traffic monitoring to detect them.

• Analyze device-to-device communications across the healthcare network to establish baselines for normal behavior.
• Detect anomalous behavior and suspicious connections that indicate potential compromise or data exfiltration.
• Use East-West traffic analysis to identify threats that would otherwise go undetected by perimeter-focused tools.

5. Strengthen Vulnerability Management

Many healthcare devices can’t be patched through standard IT processes, but vulnerability management still plays an important role.

• Identify vulnerable devices and outdated software across the environment, even when remediation options are limited.
• Prioritize remediation based on exposure, risk, and the availability of compensating controls.
• Collaborate with device manufacturers when patches aren’t available to explore alternative mitigations or workarounds.

The Impact of Deep Observability in Medical-Device Security

Network observability in medical-device security refers to collecting and analyzing traffic and related metadata from relevant network segments, data centers, cloud environments, and remote-access paths. Passive taps, mirrored feeds, virtual sensors, or equivalent out-of-band mechanisms can provide visibility without placing monitoring infrastructure inline with safety-critical operations. The resulting network intelligence can be sent to approved security, observability, vulnerability-management, and incident-response workflows, subject to encryption, privacy, retention, and coverage limitations.

Here’s how Gigamon helps healthcare organizations secure unmanaged assets:

• Enhances visibility across medical, IoT, and traditional IT environments: The Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline delivers consistent network intelligence across on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure, giving security teams a unified view of device activity regardless of where it occurs.
• Delivers actionable intelligence from network traffic: Gigamon provides network intelligence that can help security teams detect threats and investigate incidents. It can also support compliance efforts.
• Supports Zero Trust, segmentation, and threat detection initiatives: Network intelligence can support Zero Trust and segmentation programs by supplying device, identity-context, destination, and behavioral evidence for policy design, validation, and investigation. It can also contribute to compliance evidence.

Gigamon AI further extends these capabilities by applying machine learning to network traffic data, helping security teams identify anomalies and prioritize alerts across complex healthcare environments.

Visibility Is the Foundation of Healthcare IoT Security

Healthcare organizations that invest in network-level visibility are better positioned to discover, monitor, and protect the full range of assets on their networks. Request a live demo to see how Gigamon supports healthcare security teams in addressing the challenges of unmanaged medical devices and IoT infrastructure.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Is Medical Device Security Important?

Medical devices are often connected to hospital networks and the internet, which expands the attack surface for healthcare organizations. Vulnerabilities in these devices may provide a path to network access, disruption of clinical operations, or exposure of protected patient data. Because many medical devices can’t be patched or monitored through traditional methods, they require dedicated security strategies.

What Are Unmanaged Medical Devices?

Unmanaged medical devices are connected devices that aren’t covered by standard endpoint security tools or IT management platforms. This includes equipment running legacy operating systems, devices with vendor restrictions that prevent agent installation, and third-party or temporary equipment that isn’t captured in the organization’s asset inventory. These devices often operate continuously on healthcare networks with little to no active monitoring.

How Does Network Visibility Improve IoT Security in Healthcare?

Network visibility can help security teams identify connected devices, understand communication patterns, and flag unauthorized or anomalous behavior without requiring software agents on the devices themselves.

This is especially valuable in healthcare environments where agent-based monitoring isn’t an option for most clinical equipment. With network-level intelligence, security teams can detect anomalies, enforce segmentation policies, and respond to threats faster and with more context.