Developing and evaluating a proposed health security framework in IoT using fuzzy analytic network process method

Internet of Things (IoT) played a significant role in Healthcare. One of the major challenges in IoT health is security. For this reason, regarding the past studies, there is a lack of a comprehensive security framework that encompasses all layers of IoT. This article offers a security framework with four layers of sensor, network, service, and application. These layers help to develop security mechanisms within the proposed framework by providing security solutions. Also, security improvement has been influenced by the Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique. To evaluate this framework, a conceptual model was defined with six critical criteria including security, network, services, interoperability, privacy, and reliability. The validity and reliability of this conceptual model were analyzed using SPSS 24 and AMOS 18. After proving the important criteria in the proposed model, we used the MCDM process of fuzzy analytic network process to prioritize the important criteria. The evaluation results of the conceptual model in the proposed framework, after analyzing the routes, show the validity of the proposed criteria. Therefore, in this model, 8 out of 12 communication routes between the criteria have a positive and significant relationship and 4 routes do not. The results of prioritizing important criteria in the research model, using analytic network process method, show that the network criterion, and authentication and validation sub-criteria have the highest priority among the proposed criteria. Thus, it can be decided that security solutions in the network layer and authentication and validation sub-criteria help to develop the proposed security framework.

Automated summary

This article proposes a four-layer security framework to enhance security in the IoT healthcare field by providing security solutions for sensors, networks, services, and applications. Security improvement has been influenced by the MCDM technique. A conceptual model with six critical criteria was defined to evaluate the validity and reliability of the framework.