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Threat Modeling to Design a Decentralized Health Data Management Application

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Information Technology and Systems (ICITS 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 692))

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Abstract

Decentralized applications are increasingly recognized as efficient tools to overcome security challenges in the management of highly sensitive health information. However, research still lacks the understanding of how to address the complex security challenges in the design of health data management applications (HDMAs). In this study, we structurally analyzed security requirements of health data management systems to improve the efficiency of their design. We leveraged threat modeling to inform the design of HDMAs and proposed the system architecture accordingly to facilitate the security of interorganizational health data exchange. Our results contribute to the exaptation of threat modeling to the innovative design of decentralized applications for health data management and to the exploration of benefits of decentralization for healthcare.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://identity.foundation/didcomm-messaging/spec/.

  2. 2.

    https://www.hyperledger.org/use.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/hyperledger/aries.

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-rfcs/blob/main/concepts/0046-mediators-and-relays/README.md.

  5. 5.

    https://identity.foundation/peer-did-method-spec/.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank all participants of the expert workshops (Dr. Jochen Rill, Dr. Elias Strehle, Dr. Markus Schinle, Philip Andris, Dr. med. Christian Sigler) within the resarch project BloG\(^3\), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (16SV8371). Special thanks to Dr. Jochen Rill, Dr. Elias Strehle and Nil Busra Bedir for discussing the design of the system architecture.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Embedded Systems and Sensors Engineering, FZI Research Center for Information Technology, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Christina Erler

  2. Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Shanshan Hu & Ali Sunyaev

  3. Department of Information Systems, Free University of Berlin, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Alexa Danelski & Martin Gersch

  4. Institute for Information Processing Technologies, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Wilhelm Stork

Authors
  1. Christina Erler
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  2. Shanshan Hu
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  3. Alexa Danelski
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  4. Wilhelm Stork
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  5. Ali Sunyaev
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  6. Martin Gersch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christina Erler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ISEG, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Álvaro Rocha

  2. Facultade de Geografía e Historia, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Carlos Ferrás

  3. Departamento de Informática, Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Cusco, Peru

    Waldo Ibarra

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Erler, C., Hu, S., Danelski, A., Stork, W., Sunyaev, A., Gersch, M. (2023). Threat Modeling to Design a Decentralized Health Data Management Application. In: Rocha, Á., Ferrás, C., Ibarra, W. (eds) Information Technology and Systems. ICITS 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 692. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33261-6_38

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